1 Jonathan Edwards on Grace, Nature, and Faith Gerald R. McDermott Hunter Street Baptist Birmingham, AL Fall 2016 Edwards said there are two different kinds of grace, common and special. The first is given to many non-christians, the second only to Christians. He gave two vivid examples of religion that is inspired by common rather than special grace. In each, true love is lacking. The first illustration was the devil, who in the story of the Gerasene demoniac, cries out in a religious mode but from fear of torment : When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. Here is external worship. The devil is religious; he prays in a humble posture; he falls down before Christ, he lies prostrate; he prays earnestly, he cries with a loud voice; he uses humble expressions I beseech thee, torment me not he uses respectful, honorable, adoring expressions Jesus, thou Son of God most high. Nothing was wanting but love. Edwards then told of a wife who treated her husband respectfully but not at all from any love to him. He would not delight in her outward respect any more than if a wooden image were contrived to make respectful motions in his presence. A wife without love is like religion without love a caricature of the real. The Nature of Saving Grace If saving or special grace necessarily involves love, what is the nature of that love? In his Treatise on Grace Edwards called it divine love, and declared that it is the root of all graces the soul and essence and summary comprehension of all grace. It is the root from which springs love to neighbor, but its primary object is God. The first thing in this divine love is a relish of the excellency of the divine nature. The soul is caused by it to taste the sweetness of the divine relation. It will incline to God in every way, which means the soul will be glad when God is happy, will want God to be glorified, and will want his will done in all things. This taste of God s sweetness, or glimpse of his beauty, is so foundational that this is all the Spirit of God needs to do. Everything else that God wants from the soul will follow from this one heavenly vision. Other things will follow of themselves without any further act of the divine power. Divine love is not to be confused with gratitude to God. Truly divine love is not based on any benefit we have received. Therefore love or affection to God, that has no other ground than only some benefit received or hoped for from God without any sense of a delight in the absolute excellency of the divine nature, has nothing divine in it. So natural men who may be affected with gratitude by some remarkable kindness of God to them are probably driven not by divine love but by self-love. This is not to say that self-love is bad, or that the regenerate do not have it. Their selflove in fact may help increase their divine love because the latter is sweet and they will want
2 more sweetness. But their taste to relish sweetness in the perfection of God is prior to the influence of self-love on it, and therefore quite distinct from it, and independent of it. Grace and the Spirit Edwards believed that grace is not just from the Spirit but of the Spirit. Natural men (non-christians), he wrote, can have many experiences that come from the Spirit, such as conviction of sin and common illuminations and common affections. In such experiences, their natural faculties are assisted by the Spirit. But the saints actually possess the Spirit, and his activity within the saints is what Edwards meant by special or saving grace. Hence the very principle of spiritual life in their souls is no other than the Spirit of Christ himself. Since the Spirit is love, true saving grace is no other than that very love of God; that is, God in one of the persons of the Trinity, uniting himself to the soul of a creature as a vital principle, dwelling there and exerting himself by the faculties of the soul of man, in his own proper nature, after the manner of a principle of nature. The continued presence of the Spirit as grace becomes a disposition to holy acts. This disposition is what is recognized by others as virtue, because it is a settled quality of the saint. Physical Infusion Edwards used a long train of biblical passages to argue for a physical account of grace, which means one that changes the nature (phusis) of the soul, and not merely something that gives reasons to the mind: Without me ye can do nothing (John 15:5); No man can come to me except the Father draw him (John 6:44); The Lord opened the heart of Lydia (Ac 16:14); I will give you one heart, and I will put a new spirit in you (Ezek 11:19), and many others. As was his custom, he also appealed to logic: If God s succeeding assistance is always tied to man s endeavors, then man s success is in his own power, and this violates the teaching of Scripture. How can God promise that great revival of religion in the latter days if he does not have the power or will to determine effects? What would we say about some third person between God and us, who was left entirely to their free will to be the sole determining cause whether we should have the benefit of virtue and piety? Let us say this third person should happen to determine in our favor. Would it then be right to give God thanks and all the glory for the gift? On the contrary. This third person, whose sovereign will decides the matter, was the truest author and bestower of the benefit. Edwards hoped his readers would realize that just like this third person, God is all in the cause of every act of true virtue and piety. Efficacious not Irresistible Edwards said this is what the Christian tradition means when it says God is the sanctifier : what he does is thoroughly effectual. When he determines to move a person, the effect is infallibly consequent: Turn us, and we shall be turned [Lamentations 5:21]. God not only gives statutes to his people but inclines their hearts to his statutes. But if God is infallibly efficacious when he moves a person s will, that person is not passive. God does all and we do all. God is the author and fountain of our acts, but those acts are still ours. We are the only proper actors. It is not that God does some and we do the rest, but the reality of human action must be viewed from different perspectives in order to capture the whole. We are in different respects wholly passive and wholly active. On the one hand, God circumcises the heart, but on the other hand, we are commanded to circumcise [our
3 hearts]. Therefore it is not a contradiction to say that the effect of God s determining our wills (doing his will) is our act and our duty. Arminians had argued that grace was resistible. Edwards thought this idea was ridiculous and enormous nonsense. For the effect of grace is on the will, to make it want a certain thing. To say that the will, which is moved to want that thing, can also resist that grace and hence want the opposite, is to say that a man wills to resist his will. For Edwards, this was not only illogical but bad psychology. People are simply not like that. Edwards also disliked the Calvinist use of the word irresistible for grace, since that gives the impression that we are dumb blocks of wood that do not participate in our own decisions. Edwards was emphatic that we are free in our willing: we choose what we want. In grace God moves our will, but it is our will. Grace is Free Edwards s principal objection to Arminian views of salvation was that they diminished or destroyed God s freedom by implying that God s gift depends on the condition of his recipients. Because Arminians had, in Edwards s view, convinced most people that God was waiting for human beings before he could save them, the New England theologian had his work cut out for him. Tis a doctrine mightily in vogue, that God has promised his saving grace to man s sincere endeavors in praying for it and using proper means to obtain it. So it was not God s will or sovereignty that determined who would be saved and, by implication, how history would play out, but the decisions of fickle men and women. Edwards insisted this was a fundamental misunderstanding of how God saves his creatures. He does not look for something in them that is worthy or anything else. His decision to give them salvation was made long before they had a being. The reason for his conferring salvation on the elect is because of his absolute inclination to goodness in his own nature and for nothing at all in them. It wasn t because of the loveliness of what we do. We had nothing of goodness to offer God, only much unloveliness or odiousness. Besides, Christ had fulfilled the condition of righteousness in our place, so there was no need of righteousness in us before God could save us. So there are no preconditions for grace, either sincerity or anything else. Grace is free. It is a sovereign act of God. But that does not mean that Edwards eschewed means. Scripture, preaching, Sabbath-keeping, prayer, parental instruction, sacraments, church worship and practice were all necessary to give grace a better opportunity to act. They were like the wood pyre which Elijah built on Mt. Carmel. In and of themselves, they had no power. God was sovereign over them. But God used them to show his power and dispense his grace. He did this through the matter which the means provided notions or ideas of the things of religion such as God, Christ, the future world, what Christ had done and suffered, etc. These ideas were the necessary matter provided by means of grace that gave opportunity for the Spirit to act. Edwards advised that the means need to be true, for a false idea would give no opportunity for grace to act. They also needed to be as full as possible, with all of their associated ideas. Furthermore, the more lively these ideas were, and the more often they were revived, the greater the opportunities for grace to act. Yet at the end of the day, they worked not by any natural force of their own but by God s immediate operation of the Holy Spirit.
4 Faith What is faith? Edwards used a host of definitions, but they can be gathered around three foci. The first is intellectual-- belief in or assent to testimony, truth, and promises. The truth is that of the gospel and Jesus Christ, which brings knowledge of God and Christ. Edwards noted that belief is the primary word for faith in the New Testament. 1 The Old Testament s chief designation, trust, is a second primary way that Edwards defined faith. He said faith is trust in Christ that involves submission. It also means depending on promises, like the way [an eighteenth-century] wife depended on her husband for protection and guidance. It is the opposite of trusting in one s own righteousness, and also the opposite of fearfulness. It is consent to the sufficiency of Christ s work of obedience and suffering for us. 2 Because it is a permanent gift of God, faith is not fleeting but a habit, disposition, and complex idea. It becomes a foundational principle in its subject, and conditions her future existence. Thus it has real effects, and a principal effect is repentance. Repentance is implied in faith... Thus by faith we destroy sin. Conversely, whenever sin is aright confessed to God, there is always faith in that act. The two are inseparable. Therefore faith is exercised both about the evil to be delivered from, and the good to be obtained. Faith and the Whole Person Because faith is a disposition and not simply an exercise of the mind, it involves the whole person. It is more than merely the assent of the understanding, because tis called an obeying the gospel. It involves both an act of judgment and one s whole inclination. True faith is ready to undergo whatever Jesus Christ requires; faith without that commitment is rotten. Such a person may believe that Christ is the Son of God and Savior, but the absence of that commitment proves it is not true and saving faith. If a prince makes suit to a woman in a far country, that she would forsake her own people, and father s house, and come to him, to be his bride; the proper evidence of the compliance of her heart with the king s suit, is her actually forsaking her own people, and father s house, and coming to him. Practice is the best test of faith. Thus Edwards used a range of phrases to portray the involvement of the whole person in true faith: gladly receiving Christ, committing to Christ, obeying doctrine, coming to Christ, opening the door to Christ, eating and drinking Christ, following him, embracing his promises, cleaving to him, being disposed to sell and suffer all for him, flying to him for refuge, entirely embracing and yielding to Christ, and quitting other hopes. He warned that it is an act of the soul, not merely the feeling of love. Faith must be expressed to be true faith, and a paramount expression of faith is prayer. Faith is not only waiting on, hoping in, and rolling oneself onto the Lord; it is also union with him entire, immediate, and perpetual as there [is] between a head and living members, between stock and branches. Faith and Sensory Experience While Edwards could occasionally say that saving faith may be built upon rational arguments, far more often he spoke of the power of a sense of the beauty and amiableness of a thing to be the only thing that would move the will. True faith is but a sensibleness of what is real in this matter of our redemption. His most powerful motif was the sense of the heart that animates all true religion. The reality which faith senses is God s beauty: faith is the soul s entirely acquiescing in this revelation from a sense of the dignity and glory and excellency [one of Edwards s synonyms
5 for beauty] of the revealer of the revelation. Faith also senses the gloriousness and excellency of gospel things in general, [such] as the greatness of God s mercy, the greatness of Christ s excellency and dignity and dearness to the Father, the greatness of Christ s love to sinners, etc. It is a sense of the reality and sufficiency of Christ as Savior. This faith comes from a spiritual taste and relish of what is excellent and divine, so it is the enjoyment of a heart awakened to beauty now seeing what is true beauty. This is why Edwards speaks of the symphony between the soul and these divine things. Faith is not only seeing but hearing; a certain musical ear is opened by faith to hear heavenly music. Part of the beautiful reality that faith sees is God s sovereignty, in which God may damn [souls] if he pleases, and may save them if he pleases. Once faith sees not only the need to vindicate God s honor and majesty after the infinity of human sin, but also the sufficiency of Christ s suffering to do that, it then realizes that God has no disposition and no need to punish us. For even though it has a sense of God s being very angry and of the justice of that anger, its experience of the sufficiency of the doctrine of the gospel will bring peace of conscience. It will ease the burden of guilt and fear. For it sees that by Christ s offering God s righteous wrath was appeased. Assurance of Salvation Edwards had no patience with those enthusiasts who limited the testimony of the Spirit [to one s own salvation] to inward, invisible, impractical flashes of assurance. He was convinced that faith is greater than one s feelings about it. Like other Calvinist theologians, Edwards believed the most reliable path to finding assurance of one s salvation came through the performance of good works. He believed the Spirit works in the heart of the believer, but always to change the will, and so always evidenced over time in a life of practice. The signs that lead to assurance are inner motions of loving God, fearing God, trusting in God, repentance, believing in Christ, choosing and resting in God and Christ, which will always manifest in outer signs of bringing forth fruit, doing good works, keeping God s and Christ s commandments universally and perseveringly. While a life of Christian practice was the most reliable path to assurance, the highest kind of evidence was the rational inward witness to the truth of the gospel. This is the witness of the Spirit by which the mind sees that the Christian story is not a thing of mere imagination. The Spirit shows the sinner the divine glory and stamps of divinity that are in the gospel, testifying to the reality of gospel s claims. With this witness comes a sense of certainty, given not by a chain of arguments but by an intuitive seeing of God s beauty, purity, majesty, loveliness, and ten thousand other things. This revelation of the beauty of the gospel is the third of three witnesses, said Edwards. The other two are the water that is the experience of the power of the gospel to purify and sanctify, and the blood which is the sense in the sinner s conscience that she has been freed from guilt. But Edwards also recognized that assurance can be difficult. We are blinded to our true selves by sin, and unable to see clearly because of the darkness within us. It is not at all because the Word of God is not plain, or the rules not clear, but we are confused by a pernicious distemper within us. Or we spend too much time in self-examination, when we should be running (as Paul said he was running to get the prize in 1 Corinthians 9) rather than considering. Means of grace should be used at these times of doubt, focusing on the gospel promises and striving to obey the commands of Scripture. Self-contemplation, especially by melancholic souls, can be lethal. Edwards himself had times of being overwhelmed with
6 melancholy and seemed to have learned from them the importance of means of grace and Christian practice. Focusing on what we need to do can be a welcome tonic to those whose minds are confused by turmoil within. Edwards recognized that other saints were plagued by a sense of condemnation because of their bad habits and backslidings. He reminded them that the best antidote to fear is repentance from their backslidings, but also that even the best saints have much corruption within themselves, and that we are justified by the righteousness of Christ and not our own. Therefore we need to keep our eyes on God s glory, and Christ s excellency, not our own attainments, and high experiences. If we look too much to our own experience, we are living on experiences, and not on Christ. We need to join self-reflection with reading and hearing the Word of God. Listening to the law and promises of Christ, combined with seeing the Spirit work in our lives, is the best way to avoid both self-righteousness and despair. 1 WJE 21:417,447. 2 WJE 21:417,419; WJE 13:386.