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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2010
Assurance of salvation is a matter of perennial pastoral concern and theological controversy. After the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards developed a doctrine of assurance based largely on discerning the work of the Spirit in the affections and actions of the professed believer. One might have expected from this theocentric, trinitarian and surprisingly participational theologian a robust doctrine of assurance and a joyful, other-centred spirituality. Ironically, however, profound ambiguities persisted within it which will be shown to arise from the predominantly pneumatic nature of his version of theosis, a blurring of the distinction between justification and sanctification, and the power of his predominantly psychological analogy of the Trinity. This article will therefore first present the main features of Jonathan Edwards’ doctrine of the assurance of salvation. The second section will evaluate it by outlining factors in Edwards’ theology which might have been expected to produce a high level of certainty concerning assurance, and then those which might militate against this certainty. Whilst Edwards did at times espouse the social analogy of the Trinity, his theosis is constructed predominantly within the psychological analogy. Innovatively modified though it was, because Edwards works within this framework, he overemphasises the pneumatological union of the saints with God, at the expense of the incarnational union of God with and for humanity in Christ. This results correspondingly in an inordinate reliance for assurance on the Spirit's work within the realm of human subjectivity, over against objective christological realities. In short, Edwards’ theology of assurance is, in the end, individualistic and anthropocentric.
1 See, for example, the strident tone of missional theologian Orlando Costas, E. in Liberating News: A Theology of Contextual Evangelization (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 82Google Scholar.
2 See McDermott, Gerald R., Seeing God: Jonathan Edwards and Spiritual Discernment (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2000), p. 22Google Scholar.
3 Edwards, Jonathan, A Treatise on the Religious Affections (London: Andrew Melrose Publishers, 1902; 1st publ. 1898)Google Scholar, hereafter Religious Affections. Edwards, Jonathan, Religious Affections, ed. Smith, John E. (1959, 1987) in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, gen. ed. Stout, Harry S. (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1957–2003)Google Scholar, hereafter YE. Works (Banner) will refer to The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974; 1st publ. 1834). Some consideration is also given here to earlier works such as Charity and Its Fruits (1738).
4 Religious Affections, pp. 164 ff.
5 Ibid., p. 171. See also Danaher, William J., The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards (Columbia Series in Reformed Theology; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004), p. 136Google Scholar.
6 Charity and Its Fruits, YE, vol. 8, p. 133. This is similar to Barth's uniting (yet distinguishing) of the love of God and neighbour, but in Barth it is arrived at not in a pneumatic manner but rather on incarnational grounds. God has become neighbour to humanity in Christ by the incarnation and therefore all humanity is co-humanity (Church Dogmatics, I/2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2nd edn. 1975), hereafter CD, p. 402.
7 Charity and Its Fruits, YE, vol. 8, p. 133.
8 Though there are not many explicit references to the Trinity in his reflections on conversion and assurance, as Amy Plantinga Pauw has affirmed, ‘What marks them as trinitarian is the persistent identification of the Holy Spirit with divine love and the pervasiveness of the core trinitarian vocabulary of love, consent and union’. Pauw, Amy Plantinga, The Supreme Harmony of All: the Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 152Google Scholar.
9 YE, vol. 2, pp. 252–3.
10 Ibid., p. 239. See also Danaher, Trinitarian Ethics, pp. 134–6.
11 Works (Banner), vol. 1, p. 371.
12 Religious Affections, pp. 323, 341.
13 YE, vol. 2, pp. 416–17.
14 Ibid., p. 417.
15 See Gerald McDermott, American Religious Experience, http://are.as.wvu.edu/mcderm.htm, 4 Feb 2006.
16 McClymond, Michael J. uses this term in Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York and Oxford: OUP, 1998), p. 29Google Scholar.
17 Religious Affections, pp. 164 ff.
18 See Edwards's ‘Treatise on Grace’, in Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings, ed. Paul Helm (Cambridge and London: James Clarke & Co., 1971), pp. 67–8. There is a similar passage in the ‘Essay on the Trinity’ (Treatise on Grace, pp. 123–4) and one also in the ‘Observations Concerning the Scriptural Oeconomy of the Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption’ (Treatise on Grace, p. 88).
19 Miscellanies, no. 376, YE, vol. 13, p. 448.
20 Misc., no. 94, ibid., 260.
21 ‘Essay on the Trinity’, Treatise on Grace, pp. 118–9, 123–4.
22 Treatise on Grace, introduction by Paul Helm, p. 7.
23 This emphasis is also the burden of Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), and the sermon, ‘True Grace Distinguished from the Experience of Devils’ (1752).
24 He did retain a modified form of it, however, conceding that for the majority of people the heart of the sinner is prepared by God ‘for the receiving of Christ by a sense of his sin and misery, and a despair of help in himself and in all others’ (Misc., no. 317, YE, vol. 13, p. 400).
25 See Crisp, Oliver, ‘Jonathan Edwards on Divine Simplicity’, Religious Studies 39 (2003), pp. 23–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Plantinga Pauw, Supreme Harmony, pp. 12, 14–15, 37, 114.
27 Paul Ramsey comments extensively on similarities between Gregory of Nyssa and Edwards in YE, vol. 8, pp. 706–38.
28 Michael Jinkins, ‘“The Being of Beings”: Jonathan Edwards's Understanding of God as Reflected in his Final Treatises’, Scottish Journal of Theology 46 (1993), p. 183.
29 Steve Studebaker believes that Edwards consistently articulated social themes within the ‘mutual love’ variant of the Augustinian psychological model (see Steve Studebaker, ‘Jonathan Edwards's Social Augustinian Trinitarianism: An Alternative to a Recent Trend’, Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003), pp. 268–85). Vigorous dialogue on this matter continued between Plantinga Pauw and Studebaker in Scottish Journal of Theology 57/4 (2004), pp. 479–89. See also Danaher, Trinitarian Ethics, pp. 88–94, who notes that ‘Edwards has a more open stance regarding the social analogy’ because ‘his psychological analogy views communion in the form of dialogical self-consciousness as integral to personhood’.
30 YE, vol. 4, p. 103
31 Misc., no. 741, YE, vol. 18, p. 367.
32 Jonathan Edwards, ‘An Essay on the Trinity’ in Treatise on Grace, p. 125.
33 Works (Banner), vol. 1, p. xlvi.
34 See Plantinga Pauw, Supreme Harmony, pp. 139–42.
35 Holmes, Stephen, God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 33Google Scholar.
36 Ibid., p. 133. See also Jenson, Robert, America's Theologian (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 106Google Scholar.
37 See Bromiley, G. W., Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), p. 88Google Scholar.
38 Observations Concerning the Scriptural Oeconomy of the Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, in Treatise on Grace, p. 79.
39 Gunton, ‘Election and Ecclesiology in the Post-Constantinian Church’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 53/2 (2000), p. 213.
40 Mangina, Joseph, Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004), p. 69Google Scholar.
41 See Hart, Trevor, Regarding Karl Barth: Essays Toward a Reading of his Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), p. 58, n. 40Google Scholar.
42 See Christopher W. Mitchell, ‘Jonathan Edwards's Scottish Connection and the Eighteenth Century Revival, 1735–1754’ (Ph.D. thesis, St Andrews University, 1998).
43 Edwards counters this charge in ‘Unpublished Letter on Assurance and Participation in the Divine Nature’, YE, vol. 8, pp. 636–40.
44 Plantinga Pauw, Supreme Harmony, p. 135.
45 A phrase used by Plantinga Pauw, ibid., p. 159.
46 Ibid., p. 158.
47 See Religious Affections (YE, vol. 2, p. 203).
48 CD I/1, 295. See also Torrance, Alan J., Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation with Special Reference to Volume One of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 222Google Scholar.
49 See Roberts, Richard, Karl Barth: Studies of his Theological Methods (Oxford: OUP, 1979), pp. 93–6Google Scholar; A Theology on its Way? Essays on Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991); Heron, Alasdair, The Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), pp. 110 ff.Google Scholar; Smail, Thomas, The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988), p. 43Google Scholar, and Torrance, Persons in Communion, pp. 245 ff.
50 It is the opinion of Moltmann, T. F. Torrance and A. Torrance that Barth took over the concept of ‘modes of being’ (Seinsweisen) from I. A. Dorner, System der christlichen Glaubenslehre, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1879). See Torrance, Persons in Communion, pp. 242 ff.
51 McCormack, Bruce L., Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 354Google Scholar.
52 See Collins, Paul M. in Trinitarian Theology, West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers and John Zizioulas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53 See Hunsinger, George, ‘The Mediator of Communion: Karl Barth's Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’, in Webster, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 11, p. 189Google Scholar, also p. 194, n. 17.
54 Ibid., p. 179.
55 See Hastings, W. Ross, ‘“Honouring the Spirit”: Analysis and Evaluation of Jonathan Edwards's Pneumatological Doctrine of the Incarnation’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 7/3 (July 2005), pp. 279–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 See Religious Affections, YE, vol. 2, pp. 411, 457–9.
57 Misc., no. 847, YE, vol. 20, p. 74.
58 Plantinga Pauw, Supreme Harmony, p. 167.
59 Misc., no. 847, YE, vol. 20, p. 74.
60 Plantinga Pauw, Supreme Harmony, p. 168.
61 Morimoto, Anri, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. See also McDermott American Religious Experience, p. 115.
62 Bombaro, John, ‘Jonathan Edward's [sic] Vision of Salvation’, Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003), pp. 45–67Google Scholar.
63 McDermott, Gerald R., ‘Jonathan Edwards and the Salvation of Non-Christians’, Pro Ecclesia 9/2 (2000), pp. 208–27Google Scholar; McDermott, American Religious Experience.
64 Hunsinger, George, ‘Dispositional Soteriology: Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone’, Westminster Theological Journal 66 (2004), pp. 107–20Google Scholar.
65 McDermott, ‘Edwards and Salvation of Non-Christians’, p. 16.
66 Plantinga Pauw, Supreme Harmony, pp. 101–3.
67 Works (Banner), pp. 5, 364.
68 Misc., no. 1091, YE, vol. 20, pp. 475–9.
69 Hunsinger, ‘Dispositional Soteriology’.
70 Ibid., p. 110.
71 Jenson, America's Theologian, p. 83.
72 Jinkins, Michael A., A Comparative Study in the Theology of Atonement in Jonathan Edwards and John McLeod Campbell: Atonement and the Character of God (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Jinkins, Michael A., ‘“The Being of Beings”: Jonathan Edwards's Understanding of God As Reflected in his Final Treatises’, Scottish Journal of Theology 46 (1993), pp. 161–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
73 Cf. Mangina, Joseph L. in Karl Barth on the Christian Life: The Practical Knowledge of God (Issues in Systematic Theology, 8; New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2001)Google Scholar.
74 I wish to thank Alan Torrance for inspiration, Bruce Hindmarsh for helpful comments, and Robert Hand for editorial assistance.