Jonathan Edwards

Scripture is the one rule, and Edwards states it flatly while correcting the Awakening's own friends rather than Rome. He treats claimed immediate revelations — including impressions that arrive carrying a text of Scripture — as new revelation to all intents and purposes, and argues that the written word is surer than a voice from heaven. Anything joined to Scripture as having the force of a rule is, in his word, forbidden.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe target is the revival, not the papacy. Edwards names "a notion that it is God's manner in these days, to guide his saints ... by inspiration, or immediate revelation" as the error that has "proved more mischievous to the present glorious work of God" than any other, and warns that if it were established Satan would "have his word regarded as their infallible rule ... and soon to bring the Bible into neglect and contempt."

We have but one rule to go by, and that is his holy word; and when we join any thing else with it, as having the force of a rule, we are guilty of that which is strictly forbidden.Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742), Part IV, sec. 2 (Hickman, Works 1:409)

Assigned at established tier and not verified. Nothing in the two Hickman volumes read this run states a position on the deuterocanonical books; the phrase "Apocrypha" was searched for and not found. The one indirect indication is that his Notes on the Bible runs from the Pentateuch to Revelation and comments on no deuterocanonical book. A reader should treat this cell as the least checked thing on the row.

Creation is real evidence: "the word declares; but the works are the proper evidence of what is declared." What natural men lack is not evidence but a sense of the heart, and Edwards traces that lack to moral pollution rather than to insufficient data. Natural reason keeps a real but bounded province — it can perceive truth, and grace sanctifies rather than bypasses it — but it cannot reach the thing that saves, which is given immediately by the Spirit and not through any means operating by its own force.

WORTH CORRECTINGNot the usual Romans 1 handling, and it should not be summarised as one — Edwards never argues "without excuse" from creation in this sermon. His two boundary lines are elsewhere: "It is out of reason's province to perceive the beauty or loveliness of any thing ... Reason's work is to perceive truth and not excellency" (head III, secondly, 3), and, on general revelation proper, "The word of God itself is no demonstration of the superior distinguishing glory of the supreme God, any otherwise than by his works" (Miscellaneous Observations, Part III, sec. 25). He also refuses to let grace bypass reason: the light "sanctifies the reason, and causes it to lie open to the force of arguments for their truth."

Is it rational to suppose, that those whose minds are full of spiritual pollution, and under the power of filthy lusts, should have any relish or sense of divine beauty or excellency; or that their minds should be susceptive of that light that is in its own nature so pure and heavenly?A Divine and Supernatural Light (1734), head III, secondly, 2

Christ is God by nature and not by delegation, equal to the Father in every perfection, and his generation from the Father is "natural and necessary, and not arbitrary" rather than a dependence on the Father's will. Edwards argues the same for the Spirit — that the Spirit of the supreme God could not be a creature put under the direction of another creature — and concludes from Deuteronomy 6:4 that Christ "is one God with the Father."

WORTH CORRECTINGDefended rather than defined. In the texts read here Edwards never uses the conciliar formula — "one substance," "three persons," "co-equal," "co-eternal" do not appear — and argues instead from divine works, titles and worship against Arians and Socinians. The nearest thing to co-equality in so many words is "God the Father hath no attribute or perfection that the Son hath not, in equal degree, and equal glory." His Miscellaneous Observations treat the Trinity mostly as the standing example of a revealed mystery, not as a doctrine to be laid out.

He is not an under God, as the Arians suppose, but, to all intents and purposes, supreme God."The Excellency of Christ" (Discourse V, on Revelation 5:5-6), head II.5 (Hickman, Works 1:682)

The whole of "The Excellency of Christ" runs on one person holding two natures without either being diminished: Christ prays with reverence "as one who had taken on him the human nature" while "at the same time he existed in the divine nature." The human nature is real and permanent — Christ "still is in the human nature" at the right hand, and was conceived and born without sin — and the incarnation added nothing to his divine excellency, "for divine excellency is infinite, and cannot be added to."

WORTH CORRECTINGAffirmed in substance, never in conciliar vocabulary. "Two natures," "one person in two natures," "unconfused" and "undivided" appear nowhere in this discourse, and the only heresy Edwards names in it is Arianism. The stance is a fair reading of what he argues, not a phrase he uses.

This became Christ, as one who had taken on him the human nature; but at the same time he existed in the divine nature; whereby his person was in all respects equal to the person of the Father."The Excellency of Christ" (Discourse V, on Revelation 5:5-6), head II.3 (Hickman, Works 1:682)

Angels are real created spirits of limited understanding, appointed to different parts of the created order and holding a real if ministerial dominion within them — "a kind of princes under God" — and Edwards says they are called gods, elohim, for exactly that reason, alongside the princes of Israel. He insists the titles thrones, dominions, principalities and powers "properly denote rate and authority" rather than mere excellence. He adds that God concealed the boundaries of those spheres so that men would not be tempted to worship them, and elsewhere treats the evil spirits behind heathen religion as real: God's people under the Old Testament "were sensible that there was an evil and malignant spirit ... as even the heathen nations had a notion of evil daemons."

WORTH CORRECTINGHe reaches this without any of the texts the modern debate runs on, so do not read him as answering it. Psalm 82 is treated nowhere in his Notes on the Bible, which stop at Psalm 91, and neither Deuteronomy 32:8 nor Daniel 10 is cited to ground the delegated rule. He also holds the two readings together rather than choosing: angels are called gods, and so are the princes of Israel, for the same reason. The line Edwards quotes as "Worship him, all ye gods" is printed in Hickman as Psalm 92:7; the words are Psalm 97:7.

So they are a kind of princes under God, over such and such parts of the creation, or within such a certain sphere ... and so they as well as the princes of Israel are called gods, Elohim.Miscellaneous Observations, I. "Angels," Miscellany 838, "Angels why called Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers" (Hickman, Works 2:605-606)

Two arguments, and the second is distinctively his. First the empirical one: a tendency is known from what is constant in event, and sin is constant without a single exception across all nations and ages, which proves "a propensity of nature, which is prevalent and effectual" to ruin. Second, on imputation, he refuses the usual defence and argues that all created oneness — the identity of a body, a tree, a person with its own past — rests on "the sovereign constitution and law of the supreme Author," so a constituted oneness of Adam and his posterity is no fiction. Freedom of the Will then supplies the mechanism: the will always follows the strongest inclination, so the bondage is a want of inclination, not a want of power.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe inability is moral, not natural, and the distinction exists to convict rather than excuse: "to ascribe a non-performance to the want of power or ability, is not just; because the thing wanting, is not a being able, but a being willing ... nothing is wanting but a will." On imputation the load-bearing sentence is "God, in every step of his proceeding with Adam, in relation to the covenant or constitution established with him, looked on his posterity as being one with him" (Original Sin, Part IV, ch. 3). Edwards also uses "original sin" in the wide sense, covering both the imputation of Adam's first sin and the innate depravity of the heart, and says the arguments for one establish the other.

A great degree of habitual wickedness may lay a man under an Inability to love and choose holiness; and render him utterly unable to love an infinitely holy Being, or to choose and cleave to him as his chief good.Freedom of the Will (1754), Part I, sec. 4, "Of the distinction of natural and moral Necessity, and Inability"

Election rests on God's sovereign good pleasure, not on anything foreseen in the creature — "love, not for any excellency, but merely God's good pleasure." He adds a causal argument: a decree grounded in foresight would make something that begins in time the cause of something eternal. And he presses a reductio against the conditional scheme — if God merely decrees that all who believe shall be saved, then "it is not election of persons, but of qualifications."

WORTH CORRECTINGDo not read him as indifferent to the reprobate. In the same chapter he holds that Christ, having accommodated himself to our nature, "really desired the conversion and salvation of reprobates, and lamented their obstinacy and misery" (sec. 13). He also declines to reconcile the doctrine with God's moral perfections on demand, observing that Paul answers the objection of Romans 9:19 by rebuking the question rather than by resolving it (sec. 27).

That election is not from a foresight of works, or conditional, as depending on the condition of man's will, is evident by [2 Tim. i. 9.] ... [Rom. ix. 15, 16.]Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, ch. III, "Concerning the Divine Decrees in general, and Election in particular," sec. 29

Faith is one act of the whole soul receiving Christ, not a compound assembled from parts: "the whole soul according and assenting to the truth, and embracing of it ... with the belief, and with the inclination and affection." Assent alone is not it — "there may be a strong belief of divine things in the understanding, and yet no saving faith." Religious Affections is the long form of the same question, and answers it three ways: by the kind of influence at work, by the object it perceives (the moral beauty of divine things, not the natural good in them that self-love can also love), and by the practice it produces.

WORTH CORRECTINGA Reformed-by-default reading would put the knowledge–assent–trust triad in his mouth, and it is not there. The word "assent" does not appear at all in the four sections of Religious Affections read here; in "Concerning Faith" he names two elements rather than three — being "persuaded of, and ... embracing, the promises" (sec. 17) — and holds that "love belongs to the essence of saving faith" (sec. 74). That is neither the triad nor the medieval formed-faith, where love is an added form on a bare assent; he explicitly denies that understanding and will can be cleanly separated in this act at all.

Upon the whole, the best, and clearest, and most perfect definition of justifying faith, and most according to the Scripture, that I can think of, is this, faith is the soul's entirely embracing the revelation of Jesus Christ as our Saviour.Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, ch. VI, "Concerning Faith," sec. 25 (Hickman, Works 2:585)

Justification is a judge's verdict, not a change wrought in the person: God "is pleased, in his dealings with the sinner, so to regard one that has no righteousness, that the consequence shall be the same as if he had." It is more than pardon — it includes a title to the reward of life, a positive as well as a negative righteousness. And faith justifies not as a virtue or a work but as it unites the soul to Christ, so that the benefit follows from the union rather than being paid for the believing.

WORTH CORRECTINGFaith is not a merit and Edwards is at pains that it not read as one: God "does not give those that believe an union with or an interest in the Saviour as a reward for faith, but only because faith is the soul's active uniting with Christ." He is also notably cool toward the standard "faith is the instrument" formula, calling it "an obscure way of speaking" and preferring that faith be called the instrument by which we receive Christ rather than the instrument by which we receive justification.

It is evident that the subject of justification is looked upon as destitute of any righteousness in himself, by that expression, it is counted or imputed to him for righteousness."Justification by Faith Alone" (1734), Discourse I on Romans 4:5 (Hickman, Works 1:623)

Edwards never argues this question, and the tier records that. The chapter where it belongs — "Of Satisfaction for Sin" — is entirely about why justice requires an infinite satisfaction; it contains no sufficient-for-all/efficient-for-the-elect formula, no denial of one, and none of John 10:15, Ephesians 5:25 or 1 John 2:2. What he does everywhere is assume a particular company: the purchase is made for the elect, and in describing Gethsemane he writes of "the awful ideas of eternal death which his elect people deserved." The stance records that assumption; the tier records that it is an assumption and not an argument.

WORTH CORRECTINGThis is not a definite-atonement argument and must not be cited as one. It is a sentence about the nature of merit that happens to name the beneficiaries. Nothing in the two Hickman volumes read this run engages the extent question directly, in either direction.

And all that Christ did in his state of humiliation, that had the nature of obedience, moral virtue or goodness, had the nature of merit, in it, and was part of the price with which he purchased happiness for the elect.A History of the Work of Redemption, Period II, Part II ("The Purchase of Redemption"), sec. 2

The genuinely saved cannot finally fall away. He argues it from the way Scripture describes the condemned — as those who never believed, and whom Christ never knew — rather than from the decree, and he handles Ezekiel 18 as teaching a certain connexion between antecedent and consequent rather than a live possibility. He also holds that God deliberately did not leave perseverance in the redeemed person's own hands, since a covenant that suspends eternal life on the fruit of a man's own strength is a covenant of works.

WORTH CORRECTINGOne sentence of his is regularly quoted against him: "Perseverance in faith is, in one sense, the condition of justification; that is, the promise of acceptance is made only to a persevering sort of faith" (sec. 3). The clause that follows fixes the sense — "the proper evidence of its being of that sort is actual perseverance" — evidential, not conditional. Religious Affections builds the same point into the twelfth sign: a Christian's obedience "persists in it to the end of life."

That they who once truly believe in Christ, never fall away finally and perish, is evident, because they that now believe not, and are in a state of condemnation, are spoken of as those that never have believed.Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, ch. VII, "Of the Perseverance of Saints," sec. 26 (Hickman, Works 2:601)

The Spirit does not merely act upon the saints; he is communicated to them and united to their faculties as a new principle of nature, and every gracious act — faith among them — is an exercise of that principle. Natural men may be influenced by the Spirit but do not have him dwelling in them "in any degree," so the indwelling is what constitutes a saint rather than a reward for having become one. The new spiritual sense given in regeneration is the same thing described from the side of perception.

WORTH CORRECTINGEdwards states this as causal architecture, not as a timeline, and it should not be quoted as a chronology. The priority argument is that no virtuous act can precede the infused principle — "there can be no one virtuous choice unless God immediately gives it" (Efficacious Grace, sec. 42) — which puts regeneration before faith in order of dependence. What he does date explicitly is assurance, which he places firmly after believing: "it is God's manner to reveal his love to men, and their interest in the promises, after they have believed, and not before."

The Spirit of God is given to the true saints to dwell in them, as his proper lasting abode; and to influence their hearts, as a principle of new nature, or as a divine supernatural spring of life and action.A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746), Part III, sign 1 (Hickman, Works 1:265)

He holds infant baptism without hesitation, and holds it as a covenant sign given to children as "parts and members of their parents" — which is exactly why the rule he presses about credible profession reaches the font as well as the Table. Parents who make no profession of godliness have no right to present a child, since "unconverted parents do never truly give up their children to God; since they do not truly give up themselves to him." The rite does nothing of itself.

WORTH CORRECTINGThis is the sharp end of the Northampton controversy, not a side issue. Edwards suspects the practice he is opposing was "an expedient originally invented for that very end, to give ease to ancestors with respect to their posterity, in times of general declension and degeneracy" — the halfway covenant named as a convenience. He also rules out any efficacy in the rite itself: "baptism can do their souls no good any otherwise than through God's blessing attending it." He declines to argue the positive case for infant baptism here, saying it "would require a large dissertation by itself."

Though I have no doubts about the doctrine of infant baptism; yet God's manner of dealing with such infants as are regularly dedicated to him in baptism, is a matter liable to great disputes.An Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God concerning the Qualifications requisite to a complete Standing and full Communion in the Visible Christian Church (1749), Part I

The Supper is a mutual covenant transaction: through the minister's words and actions Christ presents himself to believing communicants and seals his engagements, while they profess to receive him. The elements are "outward signs" and "symbols," but the reception is real and is by faith — communicants "feed upon him in their hearts by faith," and only a living faith can "discern the Lord's body ... with that spiritual sensation or spiritual gust" the ordinance is designed for. The 1749 treatise arguing that only those who are "in profession, and in the eye of the church's christian judgment, godly or gracious persons" may be admitted is what cost him the Northampton pulpit the following year.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe mode of presence is not his subject in the sections read, and the stance should not be stretched past them. The word "presence" does not occur in An Humble Inquiry Part II sec. 9, the section that treats the Supper directly; neither that section nor Part I nor Part III objection 19 engages transubstantiation, and none draws a contrast with Lutheran or other Reformed accounts. That is three sections of one 1749 treatise written about who may come to the Table, not a survey of his corpus — the claim is that he does not raise the mode of presence where he most would, not that he never raised it anywhere. The stance rests on his language of reception and sealing, not on any statement about what happens to the elements.

Christ presents himself to the believing communicants, as their propitiation and bread of life; and by these outward signs confirms and seals his sincere engagements to be their Saviour and food, and to impart to them all the benefits of his propitiation and salvation.An Humble Inquiry (1749), Part II, sec. 9, "Qualifications for the Lord's supper"

The extraordinary gifts were "given to the church only to support it in its minority, till the church should have a complete standing rule established," and were to cease "as the church advanced to the state of manhood." He rates them far below ordinary grace — "a man may have those extraordinary gifts, and yet be abominable to God, and go to hell" — and treats the impulses and impressions claimed as guidance in the Awakening as being of the same kind as inspiration rather than of the kind of grace, and as repeatedly proved false in his own experience.

WORTH CORRECTINGTwo things about his cessationism are not the standard ones. His terminus is the completed canon, not the death of the apostles — the phrase "apostolic age" appears nowhere — and his claim is expectational rather than modal. He says he does not expect such gifts and does not desire them, and elsewhere writes "if there be any such thing in these days," without asserting that God could not give them. Note also that none of the five positive marks of a true work of the Spirit in Distinguishing Marks is a miraculous gift; every one is doctrinal, moral or affectional.

I do not expect a restoration of these miraculous gifts in the approaching glorious times of the church, nor do I desire it.Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), sec. 3, "Practical inferences" (Hickman, Works 2:275)

The punishment is eternal in the strictest sense, conscious, and of the same kind and duration as the devil's — Revelation 20:10 "thus expressing both the kind of misery and the duration." He refutes the two alternatives separately. A scheme of long punishment ending in annihilation gains nothing, since on that reading the scriptural language would not measure duration at all. A scheme of purgative punishment ending in restoration "overthrows itself," because whatever reason requires a second long period requires a third, and so without end.

WORTH CORRECTINGVividness is his reputation; argument is what actually carries the position. The Edwards everyone quotes on hell is a single 1741 sermon, but the case against annihilation and against universal restoration is made in prose, as two distinct refutations, at sections 31 and 32 of this chapter. He also rejects the medicinal reading of punishment outright in the opening lines.

Eternal punishment is not eternal annihilation. Surely they will not be raised to life at the last day only to be annihilated.Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, ch. II, "Concerning the Endless Punishment of Those Who Will Die Impenitent," sec. 1

The thousand years are a future age of gospel prosperity inside history and before Christ's bodily return. It arrives by ordinary means — "by the preaching of the gospel, and the use of the ordinary means of grace, and so shall be gradually brought to pass" — and it is peopled by ordinary generations, with kings, magistrates, marriage, children and trade, and with true holiness general "though not universal." Only when it ends is Satan loosed for a little season, and only then does Christ appear to judgment. An Humble Attempt makes the same case from the other end: the prophesied abolition of idolatry "must be understood as what shall be brought to pass while this earth and these heavens remain, i.e. before the end of the world."

WORTH CORRECTINGThe reading turns on Revelation 20:4, which Edwards takes as the church's spiritual resurrection: "the great spiritual resurrection of the church of God accompanying it, resembles the general resurrection at the end of the world more than any other." That is what makes a premillennial reading untenable for him. But the label is not his and is not of his century. He never writes "millennium" — he writes "a thousand years," "the latter-day glory," "the church's jubilee" — and "postmillennial," with the three-way premil/amil/postmil taxonomy it belongs to, is a nineteenth-century coinage applied backwards to him. What the term names is well evidenced from A History of the Work of Redemption: one long age of gospel prosperity inside history, reached by ordinary means, with Christ's bodily return after it and never during it. The scheme is his; the word is the map's.

This may suffice as to the prosperous state of the church through the greater part of the period from the destruction of Satan's visible kingdom in the world to Christ's appearing in the clouds of heaven to judgment.A History of the Work of Redemption, Period III, Part VIII (Hickman, Works 1:610-611)