Jonathan Edwards’s “Ambiguous And Somewhat Precarious” Doctrine Of Justification?

By Jeffrey C. Waddington

[Jeffrey C. Waddington is a Ph.D. student in apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.]

I. Introduction

A. Prolegomena

In 1951 the gifted, prodigious, and influential Edwardsian scholar Thomas A. Schafer penned an article in which he alleges that Jonathan Edwards had placed his doctrine of justification by faith in an “ambiguous and somewhat precarious position.”[1] While Schafer recognizes that Edwards had clearly affirmed his allegiance to the doctrine in a series of sermons originally preached in 1734 and subsequently published in revised form in 1738 as part of the Discourses on Various Important Subjects,[2] Schafer believes that Edwards failed to stress the doctrine as strongly later in his life, given its importance at this early stage in Edwards’s career: “In view of the circumstances surrounding Edwards’ discourse on justification and its prominence among his first publications, the almost total lack of emphasis on the doctrine in the great works of his last twenty years needs some explanation.”[3]

Schafer admits that other concerns, such as defending doctrines that were actually under attack in Edwards’s own day (e.g., original sin and freedom of the will), and the pressures of events (perhaps his deposition from the Northampton pulpit?) may account in some way for the perceived lack of emphasis on justification in Edwards’s later life, but he thinks there are other things that provide further and perhaps more adequate explanation for this phenomenon.[4] Schafer singles out three aspects of Edwards’s theology, especially related to the role of faith, that undermine or compromise the doctrine of justification that Edwards ostensibly embraced.[5]

The three critical areas of compromise in Jonathan Edwards’s formulation of justification, as divined by Thomas Schafer, are (1) Edwards’s grounding of the legal imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer in the believer’s real union with Christ, (2) Edwards’s placement of sanctification before justification, and (3) Edwards’s use of the notion of formed faith, a notion rejected by the Protestant Reformers and more in line with Roman Catholic thinking.[6] As we examine these issues we will soon discover that they interrelate as though we were looking at a diamond through the various facets of the gem.

B. Questions and Thesis

Our questions are these: Does Schafer do justice to Edwards’s doctrine of justification by faith within his own Reformed context as it relates to the three points mentioned above, and does he prove his case that Jonathan Edwards compromised his doctrine? Our thesis in this essay is that Schafer has failed to make his case (despite its fruitfulness in contemporary Edwardsian studies) due to his apparent failure to understand or take into consideration the Reformed context in which Edwards formulates his doctrine of justification and the specific nature of Edwards’s formulations and the interrelations of his doctrines, specifically the relationship between the forensic (justification) and the transformational (regeneration/sanctification).[7] While we readily grant that Edwards was a creative and unique theologian/pastor/philosopher, and that his doctrinal formulations are often subtle and complex, and that his language is perhaps more fluid than what is found in other representatives of Reformed theology, we will find that he stands well within Protestant and specifically Reformed orthodox treatments of the subject. In fact, we believe, for the most part, that he brought particularly clear insight and depth to his discussion of the doctrine of justification and did not, in fact, compromise the doctrine or put it in a tenuous position.[8]

Our method of inquiry will be to examine each of the three evidences of possible compromise and evaluate Schafer’s reading in light of our own understanding of Edwards’s formulation of the doctrine of justification. We will then offer our own alternative assessment of each area involving the grounding of imputation in union, placing sanctification before justification, and the acceptance of the notion of formed faith.

II. Thomas Schafer on Jonathan Edwards’s Doctrine of Justification

A. Preliminary Thoughts

Of the three evidences of compromise offered by Schafer, only the first and third can really be said to stem from Edwards’s discourse on justification as such. Schafer primarily seeks to show compromise on the doctrine from material outside the discourse or by the ostensive absence of appropriate emphasis. Ironically, Schafer offers what is probably the best summation of Edwards’s discourse on justification:

The “doctrine” of Edwards’ discourse is unequivocal enough: “We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue or goodness of our own.” The justified man is “approved of God as free from the guilt of sin and its deserved punishment, and as having that righteousness belonging to him that entitles to the reward of life.” Justification is not merely the remission of sins, but a status of positive righteousness in God’s sight. Christ’s satisfaction of God’s justice and the righteousness of his active obedience constitute the only meritorious cause of justification; and these become the believer’s only by imputation. Since every sin is infinitely heinous in God’s sight, God in justifying does not consider any goodness, value or merit whatsoever in the sinner. Faith alone is the means or instrument of justification, because it is the act by which the soul receives and is united to Christ and which therefore makes possible the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer. All works are therefore destitute of merit, even those which flow from faith; it is only the element of faith in them that God accepts for justification. Hence, the believer is unconditionally and eternally justified upon his first act of faith. A saving faith is one which, by definition, perseveres; and all future acts of repentance and faith are virtually contained in the first act and are so regarded by God. There is no real conflict between Paul and James: Paul speaks of justification before God, which is by faith alone; whereas James deals with justification before men, which is by works as the evidence of faith.[9]

Our concern is not with a detailed exposition of Edwards’s discourse on justification per se, but this faithful summation is included here to serve as an indication of Edwards’s thought on the doctrine as a whole.

B. The Legal Grounded in the Real

The first piece of evidence that Schafer puts forward in his desire to demonstrate Edwards’s compromise is that Edwards grounds the legal imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer in the believer’s real union with Christ by faith. “It is actual union with Christ which renders the soul acceptable to God and is the ‘ground’ of justification.”[10] Edwards specifically tells us that “what is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal; that is, it is something really in them, and between them, uniting them, that is the ground of the suitableness of their being accounted as one by the Judge.”[11]

Schafer is apparently uncomfortable with the grounding of the legal in the real, as though this somehow compromises the forensic or gracious nature of justification.[12] As he puts it, “What then of the ‘legal union’ of the soul with Christ which is concerned in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness?”[13] For Schafer, it appears as though the real union vitiates the external nature of imputation: “But the natural creates the legal, not vice versa; something really existing in the soul precedes the external imputation.. .. Justification from this point of view is but the restatement in forensic terms of a fait accompli, for faith is the union, and the union effects the justification.”[14]

What could be Schafer’s problem with Edwards’s fairly standard Reformed construal of justification as being grounded in union with Christ?[15] Has Schafer construed the union of the believer with Christ as vitiating the external nature of imputation? Does the very idea of an imputation of an external or alien (i.e., Christ’s) righteousness require that the believer be “outside” or separated from Christ? Does the union of the believer with Christ, which for Edwards serves as the grounding of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, imply some kind of innate or intrinsic (i.e., “natural”) holiness, virtue, or other state or quality of the soul? The fact is, for Jonathan Edwards, the union of the believer with Christ does not produce a commingling of Christ and the believer (a tertium quid) so that the Christian then becomes divinized or, as he put it, the believer is not “godded.”[16] Rather, the Holy Spirit (i.e., the Spirit of Christ) is directly active in the soul of a believer but not merged with him. While the believer is united to Christ, the righteousness that is accepted on behalf of the believer is really Christ’s. Therefore, the imputation still involves an external righteousness as such.

Perhaps Schafer wants to offer a general criticism of the Reformed perspective while using Edwards as an example of that position. That is, some see this Reformed emphasis on union with Christ as the “central soteric blessing”[17] as detrimental to the centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin argues that “our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ.”[18] Stressing the need for union between the believer and Christ, Calvin writes, “.. . as long as Christ remains outside us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.”[19] What may be disturbing to some concerning Calvin’s doctrine of unio cum Christi is that he holds to a duplex gratia dei in which justification and sanctification are concurrent blessings received, along with adoption and so forth, all at once.[20] This could be seen to jeopardize the forensic and declarative nature of justification, but it need not necessarily do so. To receive all the blessings at once is not to merge or blur them. Justification and sanctification are to be distinguished but never separated.[21]

Regarding Jonathan Edwards in particular, his doctrine of justification must, of course, be understood within his overall theology and, as John Bombaro reminds us, must be seen in the context of inner-trinitarian relations, especially it must be seen in terms of the purchase of the Holy Spirit in the eternal sphere within the pactum salutis as well as in the temporal accomplishment of redemption in the life and death of Jesus Christ and the application of redemption.[22] In other words, the

ontological basis for forensic imputation, i.e., the transaction of Christ’s faith and righteousness to the believer, fundamentally concerns the Spirit in an eternal arrangement. Indeed, in Edwards’ 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.[23]

The real union of the believer in Christ involves the work of the Holy Spirit, which can be traced back to the eternal inner-trinitarian pact.[24] In other words, the “real” union that Edwards says grounds the legal imputation is the Holy Spirit bringing to bear on the individual believer the results of the eternal pactum salutis and the historia salutis involving the life and death of Christ, not some innate or intrinsic quality or state of the human soul.[25] The real or ontological union of the believer with Christ, for Edwards, has been ordained in eternity and has been accomplished in redemptive history and involves the purchase of the Holy Spirit by Christ for his people. The Holy Spirit in turn is the exercise of faith and love in the life of the believer. So imputation is ordained in eternity and is accomplished by Christ and applied in temporal history. But the ontological (or predestinarian) union must be distinguished from the temporal (historical-federal and present faith) union, which is brought about through the work of Christ and the ministrations of the Holy Spirit. For Edwards, the believer is justified because Christ himself has been justified (or, as some translations have it, “vindicated”) in his resurrection out from among the dead.[26] In the light of the foregoing, the legal union (i.e., imputation) is ordained in the eternal ontological union of Christ with his people that occurs in the pactum salutis and is accomplished in the redemption of the historia salutis, not in the temporal (or present faith) union that occurs in regeneration. That is, for Edwards, justification is not based upon something innate or intrinsic in the soul. It is admittedly a real union, something that resides in the human soul, but it is the Holy Spirit, who is the vinculum between the eternal and the temporal unions.

Whether Thomas Schafer criticizes Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of justification because union grounds forensics or because Schafer is critical of the general Reformed emphasis on union with Christ, we believe Edwards has not, at least on this point, compromised his doctrine of justification by faith. In fact, with John Gerstner, we would argue that his especially clear emphasis on union with Christ only enhances his treatment of justification and gives it a rather solid foundation.[27]

C. Sanctification Precedes Justification

Thomas Schafer’s second piece of evidence for Jonathan Edwards’s compromised doctrine of justification is his perceived placement of sanctification before justification.[28] Typically in Reformed theology, there have been two views of this relation. Sanctification has been seen either as a progressive work in the life of the Christian subsequent to effectual calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, and justification, or as a concurrent blessing received with justification in union with Christ.[29] Schafer sees Edwards departing from Reformed orthodoxy at this point[30] Conrad Cherry captures the central thrust of Schafer’s criticism:

The upshot of the argument appears to be an abandonment of the traditional Calvinist position that sanctification is a progressive struggle for holiness that grows out of faith, and the adoption of a view repugnant to the thrust of Reformation Protestantism, the view that faith is based upon man’s becoming sanctified or holy-in-himself.[31]

What do we make of this contention that justification is made to rest upon sanctification (i.e., it rests upon some virtue or innate state or quality of the human soul possessed by the believer)? Is it a fair reading of Edwards? He does appear to provide fuel for Schafer’s criticism in a remark, cited by Schafer, made in one of his “Miscellanies” to the effect that “there must be the principle before there can be the action, in all cases.. .. Yea, there must be the principle of holiness before there can be the action, in all cases.”[32] This principle of holiness would then be the basis for the first act of faith that ends in union with Christ that results in justification. This would then seem to make the exercise of faith by the believer rest upon some virtue in the soul.

As we have already mentioned, Edwards self-consciously stood within the Reformed tradition in which regeneration either preceded faith and repentance (and therefore, justification) in the logical-causal ordo salutis or was a concurrent blessing with justification obtained in union with Christ.[33] Regeneration can be seen as a form of sanctification, perhaps as initial sanctification or as sanctification begun.[34] Looking at a larger segment of Edwards’s “Miscellanies” no. 77 may help us in ascertaining Edwards’s point in the quotation given above:

What is held by some, that none can be in a state of salvation before they have particularly acted a reception of the Lord Jesus Christ for a savior, and there cannot be sanctification one moment before the exercise of faith, as they have described it, cannot be true as they explain this reception of Christ. There must be the principle before there can be the action in all cases. There must be the alteration made in the heart before there can be action consequent upon this alteration. Yea, there must be a principle of holiness before holiness is in exercise. Yea, an alteration must not only be before this act of faith in nature as the cause before the effect, but also in time, if this embracing Christ as a savior be a successive action, that is, an action when one thought and act of the mind in anywise follows another, as it certainly is. For first there must be an idea of Jesus Christ in the mind, that is an agreeable and truly lovely idea of him. But this cannot be before the soul is sanctified.[35]

It seems clear here that Edwards is talking about regeneration even though he uses the words “holiness” and “sanctification.” As Conrad Cherry says,

It is perhaps best to call this action of the Holy Spirit, which is the foundation of faith, a kind of sanctification. Traditionally Reformed theologians held to “progressive” sanctification: it was the activity of God’s Spirit in man’s inward parts whereby regeneration, initiated by vocation, was continued and gradually completed as man struggled in the race of life and as the Spirit more and more cleansed man of his sin. Sometimes the term “regeneration” was virtually identical with “sanctification” embracing the whole work of the Spirit in man. At other times “regeneration” designated the new birth of man in conversion which does not admit of degrees, while “sanctification” referred to the progressive cleansing by the Holy Spirit. Although Edwards applied “sanctification” to the gift of the principle that awakens the act of faith, and although he is not careful at all times to distinguish sanctification from regeneration and calling, he by no means fell away from his Reformed tradition in meaning.[36]

In the Reformed tradition, regeneration either precedes faith and justification or, at the very least, it is a concurrent blessing.[37] It is not possible for someone to exercise faith (an act of the soul) without the proper disposition, and this disposition we call regeneration. It is this regeneration (or, for Edwards, sanctification or principle of holiness) that causes the believer to see the idea of Jesus Christ as “agreeable and truly lovely.”[38]

Additionally, this disposition is not, as Schafer seems to think, an “inherent state” or quality of the soul.[39] Regeneration is the act of the Holy Spirit in the human soul, the infusion of a new disposition. For Edwards, the disposition to exercise faith (what he elsewhere calls the “new sense,” “the sense of the heart,” “spiritual understanding,” or a “relish for God and the things of God”) is not even what would be called in Thomistic terms “created grace” since the new disposition is the Holy Spirit himself.[40] Unless Schafer is wanting to affirm that Edwards held to some form of theosis or divinization, how could he think that Edwards was talking about innate or intrinsic states when he was talking about regeneration?[41]

As with the issue of the grounding of the legal imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer involved in justification in union with Christ, Edwards has been found not to compromise his doctrine of justification by faith by putting sanctification as such before justification. Despite his admitted peculiarities, Edwards stands within the pale of Reformed orthodoxy. He has not placed justification in a tenuous position by making it contingent upon innate or intrinsic states or qualities in the soul.[42]

D. Formed Faith

The third piece of evidence of Jonathan Edwards’s compromise of his doctrine of justification by faith is his apparent acceptance of the (traditionally Roman Catholic) notion of formed faith. As Schafer tells us, “According to the Catholic theologians, it is love which makes faith saving and meritorious, changing it from mere ‘informal’ assent to ‘formal’ and living faith.”[43] Schafer rightly notes that love (or consent or affiance) is a central concern for Edwards:

Here is the center of Edwards’ piety: a direct intuitive apprehension, a “sight,” a “sense,” a “taste” of God’s majestic beauty, a love of God simply because he is God, an exultant affirmation of all God’s ways. This, to Edwards, is the meaning of faith. Upon this experience Edwards builds his doctrine of the “divine and supernatural light,” which confers and is this new sight and taste of the essential loveliness of God and divine things. Spiritual light does not reveal new articles of faith; it suffuses the familiar gospel with a glow that irresistibly draws the soul. True faith is its essence and fruit.[44]

Schafer here is reminding us about Edwards’s central doctrine of the “sense of the heart” in which he distinguishes between two types of knowledge or understanding, notional or speculative knowledge and spiritual knowledge. All people, regenerate or unregenerate, possess notional or speculative knowledge, but only the regenerate possess spiritual knowledge. According to Edwards, a man might be an exceptional theologian, understanding the intricacies of subtle philosophical distinction, and yet not be regenerate. He possesses speculative knowledge only. On the other hand, the regenerate believer possesses spiritual knowledge because he or she has a relish for God and divine things. One could have speculative knowledge without spiritual understanding, but one could not have spiritual understanding without speculative knowledge. But what is the essence of this spiritual understanding or sense of the heart? Schafer offers this description:

Speculative knowledge, including “historical” faith (the practical equivalent of the Catholic “informed” faith), belongs to the understanding alone; whenever the mind perceives in its object that which touches the self or its concerns, the will goes out of equilibrium and “consents” to or “dissents” from that object. The “consent” or “affiance” of the soul to Christ in faith is therefore an act of love—”love is the main thing in saving faith; the life and power of it.”[45]

The difference between notional or speculative understanding and spiritual understanding, then, is the presence of love, which for Schafer means that Edwards may be (however unwittingly) affirming the Roman Catholic doctrine of formed faith, which would compromise the Protestant understanding of true faith having its own integrity. But is Schafer correct here? Does Edwards for all practical purposes embrace the doctrine of formed faith, or has Schafer elided over some significant differences, despite the apparent similarities? Schafer inquires:

But one may fairly ask whether Edwards has retained a unique act of the soul called faith which becomes the condition of justification separately from all other acts of the soul. The Reformers, and their disciples after them, had felt it necessary to deny that the essence of justifying faith includes the idea of obedience or love since these are acts or at least “habits” in the soul, whereas justification respects no such possessions of the believer. According to the Catholic theologians, it is love which makes faith saving and meritorious, changing it from mere “informed” assent to “formal” and living faith.[46]

Love is surely central to Jonathan Edwards’s understanding of the “sense of the heart.” But we think it a mistake to confuse the accompanying presence of love with true faith with the meritorious nature of love in the Roman Catholic doctrine of formed faith. In other words, no Reformed theologian would have separated true faith from love, although they would be clear to distinguish them.

There may be a formal similarity between the Catholic understanding of “informal” or “unformed” faith and Protestant “historical” faith, but they are not the same. Historical faith is a faulty or incomplete faith as such, whereas Roman Catholic theologians often spoke of a “true” but unformed faith that was indeed a real faith, but one that lacked its own integrity. What made this so-called true faith acceptable was the addition of meritorious love. While love always accompanies true faith for the Protestant, it is not meritorious in any sense of the word. But what is it that distinguishes true or saving faith from historical faith for Protestants? Traditionally, Protestants have distinguished three elements in true faith: knowledge (scientia), assent (assensus), and trust (fiducia).[47] Historical faith would appear to be a faith that stops with knowledge and assent, but fails to go on to trust. It is then this fiducial element that distinguishes true and saving faith from historical faith. While trust and love would seem to be natural allies or partners, they are not exactly the same. It may be this distinction that Schafer does not accept. It makes more sense, though, to interpret Edwards in line with his own Reformed tradition than to try to interpret him within an antithetical theological system, such as that of the Roman Catholicism undoubtedly familiar to him and rejected by him.[48]

Edwards’s distinction between notional and speculative understanding on the one hand and spiritual understanding on the other aligns better with the Protestant understanding of faith involving knowledge, assent, and trust. Historical faith and speculative understanding correspond to knowledge and assent, and spiritual understanding (consent or affiance) generally corresponds with trust. This trust, of course, is always accompanied by love, but love is neither the form for faith nor is it meritorious for Edwards as it is for Roman Catholic doctrine.[49] For Edwards, in order for his stress on love to be the virtual equivalent of formed faith, he would have to have a notion of true faith that is both true and unaccompanied by love per se (which given Edwards’s grounding of faith in regeneration or the “new sense” seems impossible) and he would have to hold some idea of love as meritorious so that this formed faith (true faith plus meritorious love) is what merits justification.[50] Given Edwards’s discussion in his discourse on justification that faith in itself is not even the instrumental cause (meritorious or otherwise) of justification, properly speaking, but the very act of unition of the believer to Christ (the vinculum), the idea that he came close to holding to the doctrine of formed faith fails to make sense.

Related to the meritorious nature of love in formed faith is the relationship faith bears to good works or obedience. This arises since obedience is rightly seen as a correlate of love or its fruit. If obedience is meritorious as such it would compromise the nature of faith as the vinculum between the believer and Christ, and it would also compromise the sufficiency of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer. Pastorally, Edwards wanted to avoid both dangers of legalism and antinomianism in his doctrine of justification by faith. For Edwards, then, justifying faith virtually contains within it all future acts of repentance and obedience. For Edwards, justifying faith is a faith that perseveres.

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 St. 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.. .. 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 semper iustius 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 (1) grounds initial justification in the conditional ‘first act of faith;’ and (2) also makes the status of ‘justified’ conditional upon perseverance; but then (3) declares that Christ has actually persevered in faith and practice for the believer.. .. According to Edwards, that 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.’[51]

In other words, it is by our union with Christ that we enjoy the benefits of Christ’s actual faith, obedience, and perseverance so that they become ours by virtue of being his intrinsically. This vital union between the believer and Christ brings with it many benefits among which obedience and perseverance are but two. This is not to deny that the Christian is to persevere to the end, but affirms that the perseverance is not perfect in this life, given the fact that the Christian is always a justified sinner. The obedience in justifying faith, is Christ’s faith, obedience, and perseverance and not some meritorious act of faith or innate quality in the believer’s soul.

Neither love nor obedience is meritorious for Jonathan Edwards, so we find that Schafer’s contention that Edwards compromised his doctrine of justification by faith by holding to something like formed faith or a faith-plus-obedience/good works scheme is not tenable. Edwards has once again made union with Christ the linchpin of his understanding of justification.

III. Conclusion

We have surveyed Thomas Schafer’s 1951 article, “Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Faith” and its evidence for Jonathan Edwards’s compromise of the doctrine of justification by faith and found that we can offer a better, more plausible reading of the issues—a reading grounded in the riches of Edwards’s own Reformed heritage. Edwards’s grounding of legal imputation in the real union of the believer with Christ does not make justification an after-the-fact forensic declaration.[52] Nor does Edwards place sanctification before justification when we consider the fluid use of the word “sanctification” as covering the sense of regeneration, or when we consider regeneration/sanctification as a concurrent blessing received with justification in union with Christ. Finally, Jonathan Edwards does not embrace any kind of notion of either formed faith or a mixed faith-plus-obedience/good works scheme as such. On all points, Edwards falls within the confines of Reformed Protestant orthodoxy on the doctrine of justification by faith, especially as that has been articulated within the union-with-Christ model of the application of redemption as articulated by John Calvin. This is not to deny any originality of expression or emphasis on Jonathan Edwards’s part, nor is it to deny his theological creativity (his doctrine of the virtual perseverance of the believer by his union with Christ is one such example), but to affirm that that very originality drew upon the richness of his own Reformed heritage.[53]

There does seem to be a tendency in recent Edwardsian scholarship (including Schafer’s article under consideration here) to pit the forensic nature of the doctrine of justification against the transformational nature of regeneration/sanctification/practice/disposition as though they stood in opposition to one another. The Reformed tradition has never understood the matter this way. They are complementary. The problem has always been, so it seems to us, either to pit one against the other, as here, or to confuse the one with the other. We believe Edwards would have seen both the forensic nature of justification and the transformational nature of regeneration/sanctification as distinguishable but never separable. The forensic nature of justification by itself might appear to be a legal fiction, and transformation by itself would always seem to fall short of the perfect righteousness demanded by a holy God. With this in mind, we believe that Jonathan Edwards did not compromise on the doctrine of justification by faith nor did he place it within a tenuous context.

Notes

1. Thomas A. Schafer, “Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Faith,” CH 20 (1951): 55-67; quotation on 57. Responses to Schafer appear in at least four secondary sources of which I am aware. See Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 39–41; Anri Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), and his summary article “Salvation as Fulfillment of Being: The Soteriology of Jonathan Edwards and Its Implications for Missions,” PSB 20, no. 1 (February 1999): 13-23. Most recently, the issue has been addressed in Sang Hyun Lee, ed., The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 21, Trinity, Grace, and Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 73, 101, and 104. (Hereafter all references to volumes in the Yale edition of Edwards’s works, following the first full citation, will be WJE followed by the volume number and pages.) Edwards addressed the issue of justification in his Master’s Quaestio at what is now Yale University and can be found in both Latin and English in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 14, Sermons and Discourses, 1723—1729 (ed. Kenneth J. Minkema; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 55–64. See also the helpful introductory essay by George G. Levesque in the same volume, pp. 47-53. Edwards ruminated on justification throughout his life in various “Miscellanies.” A helpful listing of these can be found in the table of “Miscellanies” subjects in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 13, The “Miscellanies,” a-500 (ed. Thomas A. Schafer; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 139–40. My concluding unscientific count yields approximately 100 entries on justification in Edwards’s private notebooks. For additional information about the historical context into which Edwards spoke, see George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), esp. 177–78.
2. The preaching of this series of sermons was apparently aimed at a growing Arminianism in New England and was the human instrument that instigated the first series of revivals that Edwards would experience in his tenure as pastor of the congregational church in Northampton, Mass. The best edition of this discourse can be found in the Yale edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 19, Sermons and Discourses, 1734–1738 (ed. M. X. Lesser; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 147–242. Lesser offers a brief but helpful introduction to the discourse on pp. 143-45. See Ava Chamberlain’s introductory comments on the relationship of Edwards’s discourse on justification to his “Miscellanies” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 18, The “Miscellanies,” 501–832 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 12–18 and 35–41.
3. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 57, emphasis added. One, of course, could ask two immediate questions of Schafer at this point: (1) Does Edwards, in fact, indicate an “almost total lack of emphasis” on this doctrine in his later works? And (2) even if he does, does this evidence itself demand Shafer’s particular explanation? Our concern in this essay is with the second question. Regarding the first question, John Gerstner tells us, “And yet there is no total loss of interest in justification by faith in the sermons of the same period. In 1744 and 1757 Edwards preached on Hos. 1:11, ‘They that do truly believe in Christ do therein by their own act appoint Christ to be their head.’ In July 1750 there came the message on 1 John 5:1 (1), ‘Saving Faith Differs from all Common Faith in its nature, kind, and essence.’ From Gal. 5:6 (2) he preached, ‘Tis a great and distinguishing property of a saving faith that it worketh by love,’ March 1751 and Jan. 1752. A sermon on ‘Abraham’s faith’ (Rom. 4:20), which justified him, was delivered in May 1753. And there are many allusions to justification by faith in the body of late sermons. Finally, in Original Sin, the doctrine of justification is very important to Edwards’ exposition” (The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards [Powhatan, Va., and Orlando, Fla.: Berea Publications and Ligonier Ministries, 1993], 3:208 n. 62). On the second question we should keep the following in mind as we look at this issue: Does Edwards’s concern with regeneration/sanctification/practice/disposition or transformational issues require that he necessarily undermined the forensic nature of justification? We think that if the answer is yes, then the same would have to be said for most Reformed theology on the matter.
4. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 57–58.
5. Ibid., 57. Schafer states that the concerns he will subsequently explore will “cause the doctrine of justification to occupy an ambiguous and somewhat precarious place in his theology.” Schafer, then, is not arguing that Edwards knowingly repudiated the doctrine of justification, since he obviously maintained an interest in the doctrine throughout his life as evidenced in his personal notebooks (the so-called “Miscellanies”) and in his preaching, but that he compromised the doctrine by embracing other views inconsistent, at least to Schafer, with a proper Protestant understanding of the doctrine of justification.
6. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 58–61. Interestingly, more recent scholarship has picked up on the observations of Schafer. Two inferences have been drawn from Edwards’s supposedly compromised doctrine of justification: (1) Edwards’s theology is more amenable to Roman Catholic theology in his doctrinal formulations than even he himself would have appreciated, and (2) while he would not have embraced the notion, his theology allows for the salvation of those outside the reach of Christianity or of those without explicit faith in Christ. With regard to the first inference, see Jon O’Brien, S.J., The Architecture of Conversion: Faith and Grace in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1967); and more recently, Morimoto’s Catholic Vision of Salvation. With regard to the second inference, Gerald McDermott has stated that Edwards affirmed justification by faith “primarily.” See his Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion and Non-Christian Faiths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 136. For a helpful counter-response to these two inferences in contemporary Edwardsian scholarship, see John Bombaro, “Beautiful Beings: The Function of the Reprobate in the Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 2002) and his article “Dispositional Peculiarity, History, and Edwards’s Evangelistic Appeal to Self-Love,” WTJ 60 (2004): 121-57. Bombaro’s dissertation is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. He has graciously provided to me portions of it via personal correspondence, and subsequent citations from it refer to the manuscript version.
7. This is, of course, not to impugn the scholarship of Schafer on the whole. Edwardsian scholars owe a huge debt of gratitude to Schafer, who is also one of the editors of the Yale edition of Edwards’s works, especially for his work on transcribing the “Miscellanies.”
8. This is not to say that we agree with every detail of Edwards’s discussion of the doctrine, but that he falls within the bounds of Reformed or Calvinistic orthodoxy. Edwards’s formulations are sometimes overly subtle and speculative. Even his doctrine of justification is not completely free of some problems. While we disagree with the way Chamberlain frames the discussion about Edwards’s two models of conversion, her discussion raises some interesting questions. Our problem with Chamberlain’s remarks stems from her apparent desire to pit Edwards’s forensic doctrine of justification against his concerns about transformation. Chamberlain says that Edwards employed “two different theological models to describe the transformation that occurs in the sinner at the conversion moment” (WJE, 18:37). According to the historic Reformed perspective, this is the wrong way to frame the issue. The forensic and transformational are not competing models for understanding conversion. In fact, justification is not about transformation or conversion per se. Justification, with its concern with imputation, addresses the question of how a sinner can stand before a righteous and holy God and be found acceptable by him. Sanctification has to do with the real change or transformation that occurs in the sinner’s life. The one is concerned with a sinner’s standing and the other with his character or ontology. One deals with the guilt of sin and the other with its power. Justification and transformation are complementary, neither in opposition nor confusion. Clearly Edwards’s concern is heavily weighted on the side of the transformational, but this does not negate his real and legitimate concern for the forensic. Justification involves the imputation of both Christ’s negative righteousness, or pardon of sin, and his positive righteousness, his obedience which is credited to the account of the believer; therefore, the believer can be found acceptable in the sight of God as the believer is seen in Christ. Regeneration and sanctification provide real change in the character and life of an individual. Justification is always complete and perfect and satisfies the demands of a holy God. Sanctification, while real, is not perfect in the believer this side of the new heavens and the new earth. In fact, strictly speaking, justification is not about transformation as such. It always accompanies transformation but cannot be either reduced to or conflated with transformation. See WJE, 21:72. Regarding Edwards’s Calvinistic theology (and his fluid use of language or theological terminology), he was happy to be called a Calvinist, but he did not see himself as a slavish follower of Calvin. See his remarks on the subject in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 1, The Freedom of the Will (ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 12 and 131, where Edwards states,”.. . yet I shall not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction’s sake: though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believe the doctrines which I hold, because he believed them; and cannot justly be charged with believing everything just as he taught.” We do not want to deny that Edwards had his own distinct emphases. For various assessments of his uniqueness within the Reformed orthodox tradition, see B. B. Warfield’s fine article “Jonathan Edwards and the New England Theology,” in The Works of B. B. Warfield: Vol. 9, Biblical and Theological Studies (ed. Ethelbert Warfield; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 515–30; John Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1977); Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 3:116–18; and Gerstner, Rational Biblical Theology, 3:191–97. Even Alister McGrath, in his Iustitia Dei (2d ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 306–7, puts Edwards well within the confines of Reformed orthodoxy on the very of issue of justification.
9. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 58.
10. Ibid. George Hunsinger has recently said that for Edwards, the believer’s union with Christ is “merely legal” in contrast to the personal and communal form of union in the theology of Calvin, and so Edwards must posit a primary and secondary ground of justification. The primary ground is the imputation of the active obedience of Christ to the believer and the secondary ground is the virtue of faith. Unfortunately, we do not have the space to interact with the arguments of Dr. Hunsinger’s article. Suffice it to say we come to different conclusions. See his “Dispositional Soteriology: Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone,” WTJ 66 (2004): 107-20, and the greatly condensed form of the same argument in “An American Tragedy: Jonathan Edwards on Justification,” Modern Reformation 13, no. 4 (July/August 2004): 18-21.
11. Edwards, “Justification by Faith,” WJE, 19:158.
12. Schafer may be exhibiting the same problem as Ava Chamberlain here. That is, perhaps he assumes that concern with transformation negates or compromises a concern with forensics. We do not see this as a necessary conclusion. See WJE, 18:37. Another possibility is that Schafer(and others) have misunderstood Edwards at this point. That is, has Schafer equated the “real” with the transformational or renovative aspect (sanctification) of union? For Edwards, the “real” simply is the relation or union between the believer and Christ. See WJE, 19:155–56.
13. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 58.
14. Ibid.
15. See Bombaro, Beautiful Beings, forthcoming.
16. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 2, Religious Affections (ed. John E. Smith; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 203.
17. I owe this expression to Lane Tipton, assistant professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
18. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; 2 vols.; LCC; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 1:527 (2.16.19).
19. Calvin, Institutes, 1:537 (3.1.1). I do not want to be understood as suggesting that there are no differences between Calvin and Edwards as to union with Christ.
20. Lutherans have historically made this criticism. In Theodore Mueller’s Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1934), 320, justification is outside of and leads into the union of the believer with Christ. “Justification effects the mystical union (unio mystica).” Schafer strikes us as exhibiting what we would consider Lutheran tendencies in this regard, although this is not made explicit. As we will see, Edwards follows the duplex gratia dei model of union with Christ formulated by Calvin. For a fuller treatment of this subject, see Kevin Woongsan Kim, “Justification by Faith: Jonathan Edwards’s Doctrine of Justification in Light of Union with Christ” (Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 2003).
21. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 59. This also tends to ignore just the issue we will look at next, namely the relationship between the historia salutis and the ordo salutis. That is, the foundation of all the blessings of union pertains to the ontological (or “predestinarian”) union whereas the experience of those same blessings in time relate to the temporal (or the “historical” or “federal” and “present faith”) union. I owe a debt of gratitude to Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., (Resurrection and Redemption: A Study of Paul’s Soteriology [Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1981]) for the terminology used here. I do not want to suggest that Gaffin agrees with Edwards at every point. See also n. 29 below.
22. Bombaro, Beautiful Beings, forthcoming.
23. Ibid. For a very informative discussion of the role of the Holy Spirit with regard to the forensic nature of justification, see Geerhardus Vos, “The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Conception of the Spirit,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation (ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.; Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2001), 91–125.
24. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 9, A History of the Work of Redemption (ed. John F. Wilson; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 119.
25. This relates to Edwards’s understanding of the work of the Holy Sprit in the life of the believer. For Edwards, the disposition of love or faith is the Holy Spirit and not some mediating entity such as created grace (i.e., it is not a created disposition or habit), see WJE, 21:71–77. See Edwards, “The Mind” nos. 1 and 45, The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 6, Scientific and Philosophical Writings (ed. Wallace Anderson; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 336–38 and 362–66. For differing views about Edwards’s acceptance or rejection of substance ontology, see Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (enl. ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 47–51; and portions of John Bombaro’s forthcoming Beautiful Beings (see n. 6 above). Lee argues for a dispositional ontology, and Bombaro differs only with applying that ontology to God and man. God and man are substantial ideas for Edwards according to Bombaro, although Bombaro agrees with Lee in his understanding of Edwards as far as the rest of creation is concerned.
26. Edwards, “Justification,” WJE, 19:151: “But God when he justified him in raising him from the dead, did not only release him from his humiliation for sin, and acquit him from any further suffering or abasement for it, but admitted him to that eternal and immortal life, and to the beginning of that exaltation, that was the reward of what he had done. And indeed the justification of the believer is no other than his being admitted to the communion, or participation of the justification of this head and surety of all believers; for as Christ suffered the punishment of sin, not as a private person, but as our surety, so when after his suffering he was raised from the dead, he was therein justified, not as a private person, but the surety and representative of all who should believe in him; so that he was raised again not merely for his own, but also for our justification, according to the Apostle.”
27. Gerstner, Rational Biblical Theology, 3:211–13.
28. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 59.
29. For a more contemporary standard treatment of this from within conservative Reformed theology, see John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955). Strictly speaking, there have been at least two major views on the relationship of justification and sanctification. The first is the view of John Calvin, which we have discussed already, that justification and regeneration/sanctification are concurrent blessings obtained in union with Christ. The second view, first enunciated at the Synod of Dordt, and exemplified in Francis Turretin, is that in the ordo salutis regeneration precedes justification and is followed by sanctification. Interestingly, a tension may exist in Murray’s book between the ordo salutis model of the application of redemption and his enthusiastic affirmation of the centrality of union with Christ, which ought not to be understood as a phase of the application of redemption coordinate with the others. Murray says, “There is, however, a good reason why the subject of union with Christ should not be coordinated with the other phases of the application of redemption with which we have dealt. That reason is that union with Christ is in itself a very broad and embracive subject. It is not simply a step in the application of redemption; when viewed, according to the teaching of Scripture, in its broader aspects it underlies every step of the application of redemption. Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation not only in its application but also in its once-for-all accomplishment in the finished work of Christ. Indeed the whole process of salvation has its origin in one phase of union with Christ and salvation has in view the realization of other phases of union with Christ” (Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 161). Does Murray, with his emphasis on both the ordo salutis and union with Christ, exhibit necessary tension? Yes, if the benefits of redemption accruing from union with Christ stem from his resurrection. Redemption is, then, a single event with many facets (for instance, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification) rather than a logical-causal order or series of discrete events. For further discussion of this issue, see Gaffin’s Resurrection and Redemption as well as his recent inaugural address given upon his installation to the Charles Krahe Chair of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, published as “Biblical Theology and the Westminster Standards,” in WTJ 65 (2003): 165-79, and also found in modified form in P A. Lillback, ed., The Practical Calvinist: An Introduction to the Presbyterian & Reformed Heritage. In Honor of Dr. D. Clair Davis (Fearn, Ross-Shire: Christian Focus [Mentor], 2002), 425–41. It should probably be noted that Calvin, Edwards, and Gaffin are not identical in their theological nuances. Calvin and Edwards appear to understand union as foundational to justification and sanctification whereas Gaffin stresses the concurrent or simultaneous nature of union, justification, and sanctification arising from the single event of Christ’s resurrection. Even here, though, Edwards recognizes that the resurrection was Christ’s own justification (per 1 Tim 3:16), and by virtue of the believer’s union with Christ, the believer is also justified (see WJE, 19:150–51). While we see commonalities between Calvin, Edwards, and Gaffin, we must not flatten out their distinctives. In other words, we must recognize both their commonalities and their differences. They share a central soteric structure. There is, in their stress on union with Christ, a strong family resemblance. We must recognize continuity, development, and difference.
30. We should make it clear that Schafer, as far as we can tell, does not intend to defend or affirm Reformed orthodoxy in his criticisms of Edwards, but merely to pinpoint areas of Edwards’s deviation from his own professed tradition.
31. Cherry, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 41.
32. Edwards, “Miscellanies” no. 77, in WJE, 13:244–45.
33. But as we have already mentioned above as well, the eternal pactum and historia salutis precede the present application. See Calvin’s remark that “Christ cannot be known apart from the sanctification of the Spirit. It follows that faith can in no wise be separated from a divine disposition” (Institutes, 1:552–53 [3.2.8]). As we have already indicated, even though Edwards can be understood within either model of the ordo, he is best understood as standing closer to Calvin than to Dordt.
34. The terminology here is fluid. In the Reformed tradition sanctification can be taken to embrace growth in grace subsequent to conversion and justification and as a synonym for “regeneration.” “Regeneration” can also be used in a broad and narrow sense, similar to the use of the word “sanctification.” Broadly understood, regeneration can refer to the whole renovative process in the Christian life (i.e., akin to sanctification broadly conceived) or to the work of the Holy Spirit at the inception of the Christian life. See Peter Van Maastricht’s “Regeneration” which is the only section of his Theoretico-Practica Theologica that has been translated from Latin into English (New Haven: Thomas & Samuel Green, 1770), 16–17. This translation has been recently reprinted with an introduction and editing by Brandon Withrow, A Treatise on Regeneration (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 2002).
35. Edwards, “Miscellanies” no. 77, in WJE, 13:244–45. Original sin is a disposition, for instance, prior to any sinful acts. Edwards’s argument against libertarian freedom in Freedom of the Will depends upon this same line of reasoning, that acts depend upon prior dispositions.
36. Cherry, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 42–43.
37. See n. 34 above about the broad and narrow uses of terms such as regeneration and sanctification.
38. Edwards, “Miscellanies” no. 77, in WJE, 13:244–45.
39. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 59. See also WJE, 21:73. The Holy Spirit acts in the “manner” of a disposition. See Lee, Philosophical Theology, 231.
40. Jonathan Edwards, Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumous Writings (ed. Paul Helm; London: James Clarke, 1971), 51. See also WJE, 21:73, and Philosophical Theology, 231.
41. Bombaro, Beautiful Beings, forthcoming. Remember: Edwards affirms the distinctiveness of the individual believer and the Holy Spirit. The believer is not “godded.”
42. Again, we can recognize that Edwards’s central concern was with the transformational aspects of salvation without that negating his commitment to forensic justification.
43. Schafer, “Edwards and Justification,” 59.
44. Ibid., 61, emphasis added.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 59.
47. Francis Turretin (Institutes of Elenctic Theology [ed. James T. Dennison; trans. George Geiger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1993], 2:560–64) lists six acts involved in faith: the act of knowledge, theoretical assent, fiducial and practical assent; the act of refuge; the act of reception and union; the reflex act; and the act of confidence and consolation.
48. Edwards certainly rejected Roman Catholicism. His critical remarks in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 5, Apocalyptic Writings (ed. John F. Wilson; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) to the effect that the Pope was the antichrist would certainly lead one to question Schafer’s construal here. This is not to say that Edwards was ignorant of the discussions within Roman Catholic theology as modern conservative evangelicals often are of the Catholic theology of our day. He was undoubtedly conversant, as Morimoto has pointed out in his Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation. Nor do our remarks fail to recognize that Edwards may have used concepts and language gained from Roman Catholic sources that he deemed usable.
49. Francis Turretin, a major influence on Edwards, tells us that Roman Catholicism errs in thinking that there can be a faith that is both true and unformed and thus needing love to perfect it. Referring to the Roman Catholic theologian Durandus, Turretin tells us that Durandus put forward that “love is not the form of faith according to its natural being; yea, it can be separated from it. But it is the form of faith according to its meritorious being, inasmuch as it deserves eternal life because the act of faith is not meritorious, except insofar as it is commanded by love (without which it does not have the relation of merit and by which man pleases God)” (Elenctic Theology, 2:581).
50. Edwards tells us in his discourse on justification that “when it is said that we are not justified by any righteousness or goodness of our own, what is meant is that it is not out of respect to the excellency or goodness of any qualifications, or acts, in us, whatsoever, that God judges it meet that this benefit of Christ should be ours; and it is not, in anywise, on account of any excellency or value that there is in faith, that it appears in the sight of God, a meet thing, that he who believes should have this benefit of Christ assigned to him, but purely from the relation faith has to the person in whom the benefit is to be had, or as it unites to that Mediator, in and by whom we are justified” (WJE, 19:155).
51. Bombaro, Beautiful Bangs, forthcoming. See esp. Edwards, “Miscellanies” no. 729, WJE, 18: 353–57.
52. We would grant that it is concurrent with “present faith” union, but the legal is grounded in the eternal or ontological union, which is the result of the covenant of redemption or pactum salutis.
53. Lee understands Edwards to stand within the contours of Protestant and Reformed tradition, WJE, 21:73. As previously noted in n. 29, Edwards shares a central soteric structure with Calvin and the rest of the Reformed tradition.