THE PURPOSE OF THE ELECT: PARTICIPATION IN THE LOVING INTRA-TRINITARIAN RELATIONSHIP
Introduction
Professor of American Christian History at Notre Dame University,Mark Noll, calls Jonathan Edwards, “the greatest evangelical mind in American history and one of the truly seminal thinkers in Christian history of the past few centuries.”[1]Over two hundred and fifty years have passed since Edwards’ death, and the secondary sources ruminating on his theology and philosophy are still being produced in great amounts with no end in sight.[2] This paper is an attempt to add to the current understanding of Edwards’ doctrine of God and doctrine of man, specifically his understanding that all of human life for the elect has Trinitarianvalue. This paper will argue that due to Edwards’doctrine of God and doctrine of man, he believed that God’s goal for creating was the exaltation of His intra-Trinitarian love through the participation of His elect image-bearers in his Trinitarian relationship.
Method
This thesis will be proven first, by examining God’s loving Trinitarianontology, His natural and moral attributes, and His reason for creating. Second, man’s creation in God’s image, man’s fall, and man’s redemption in Christ will be examined. Third, the paper will consider the elect’sparticipation in the intra-Trinitarian relationship due to union with Christ. Finally, a summary of the argument will be offered and a brief application of this Edwardsianpurpose for the elect will be considered. Primary sources throughout Edwards’ writings will be referenced, along with secondary sources from current historians and theologians.
God The Fountain
God is Love
In order to understand Edwards on the purpose of the elect, one must first understand his doctrine of God. One must begin with his primary source of theology. His theology is one from above that starts with God and then goes down to man. Since Edwards believed that Scripture is the ultimate source from above, he appealed to Scripture as the final authoritative source for understanding God and man.[3] This is not to say that he only appealed to Scripture, or that the Reformed or Christian tradition did not appeal to other sources, but is only to say that Scripture was his supreme source of authority on God and His creation.[4]
Furthermore, Edwards stood in the Reformed Tradition affirming God’s absolute simplicity.[5] He believed that God is His properties.[6]He even affirmed the identity thesis, which is highly questioned today, that God is His properties and His properties are one another.[7]Edwards believed and taught that God is love (1 John 4:8). His identity is love. His love is the ultimate fountain of all His other perfections.[8]Edwards wrote,
The apostle tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8). And therefore seeing he is an infinite Being, it follows that he is an infinite fountain of love. Seeing he is an all-sufficient Being, it follows that he is a full and overflowing and an inexhaustible fountain of love. Seeing he is an unchangeable and eternal Being, he is an unchangeable and eternal source of love. There even in heaven dwells that God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is or ever was proceeds.[9]
To Edwards, there is no love apart from God. There is no source of love outside of God that He is drawing from.[10]There is nothing greater than God; nothing existed prior to God.[11]He alone is infinite.[12] And, since God is love, He is the infinite fountain of love, the ultimate source of love.[13] God never runs out of love since He is self-existing and eternal. God can never run out of love because He can never run out of Himself. If God ran out of love, He would cease to be God according to Edwards, which is impossible.
God is Three Persons in Love
Moreover, not only did Edwards affirm that God is one in love, he also argued that God is three Persons in love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three Persons share one Divine essence. To Edwards, God’s infinite simple love proved Histriune identity. He wrote,
That in John, "Godislove"[1 John 4:8,1 John 4:16], shows that there are more persons than one in the Deity: for it shows love to be essential and necessary to the Deity, so that his nature consists in it; and this supposes that there is an eternal and necessary object, because all love respects another, that is, the beloved.[14]
There is no love if there is no object to love. Love by definition “respects another” according to Edwards.Because God is love and love is essential to His Divinity, it necessarily follows that He is more than one person. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one another’s objects of love, one another’s “beloved.” They love one another in perfect fellowship from eternity past. There is nothing lacking in this divine triune relationship.
Additionally, Edwards believed that there are eternal distinctions in the Trinity among the three Persons:
And this I suppose to be that blessed Trinity that we read of in the holy Scriptures. The Father is the Deitysubsistingintheprime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence. The Son is the Deity generated by God's understanding, or having an idea of himself, and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the Deity subsisting in act or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth, in God's infinite love to and delight in himself. And I believe the whole divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the divine idea and divine love, and that therefore each of them are properly distinct persons.[15]
God the Father is unbegotten, eternally livingas the first Person of the Trinity (prime). God the Son is generated by the Father’s idea of Himself. Yet, the Son lives in this idea as full eternal deity like the Father. The Holy Spirit is the breath of love flowing between the Father and the Son. He lives in personalized love between the Father and the Son eternally. These three Persons are one God, and there has never been a point in which they did not exist in this way.[16] The Persons of the Trinity are coeternal.[17]They are all equally God.[18]
God’s Moral Attributes and Natural Attributes
Not only did Edwards believe that God is love and God is three Persons in love, he also believed that God’s identity is made up of other attributes as well. Edwards believed that God’s attributes can be dividedinto two categories: His moral attributes and His natural attributes.[19]God’s moral attributes can be summarized as God’s love and holiness.[20] God’s natural attributes consist of His strength, knowledge, etc.[21]These two categories are necessary for God to be God, for God to be love and for God to be able to love: “for his moral attributes can't be without hisnaturalattributes: for infinite holiness supposes infinite wisdom, and an infinite capacity and greatness; and all the attributes of God do as it were imply one another.[22]
Man’s Reflection of God
Created in God’s Image
Not only did Edwards believe that God is triune love and that God has natural and moral attributes, He also believed that God’s love is the fountain for His creating purposes. God created because He loves Himself, and seeks to glorify Himself above all things:
Itis manifest that the Scriptures speak, on all occasions, as though God made himself his end in all his works: and as though the same Being,who is the first cause of all things, were the supreme and last end of all things. . . . And when God is so often spoken of as the last as well as the first, and the end as well as the beginning, what is meant (or at least implied) is, that as he is the first efficient cause and fountain from whence all things originate, so he is the last final causefor which they are made; the final term to which they all tend in their ultimate issue.[23]
God is the beginning and end of all His works. He alone is the source, and He alone is the goal. God made all things for His own glory. The Scriptures agree with Edwards’ testimony, as Edwards argued,
Thus inIsaiah 44:6, "Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts, I am the first, I also am the last, and besides me there is no God." Ch.Isaiah 48:12, "I am the first, and I am the last."Revelation 1:8, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and was, and which is to come, the Almighty." Ver.Revelation 1:11, "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last." Ver.Revelation 1:17, "I am the first and the last." Ch.Revelation 21:6, "And he said unto me, it is done, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." Ch.Revelation 22:13, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”[24]
The Scriptures’ teaching on God being the beginning and end of all things is clear.This reality begs the question, “Why did God make Himself the beginning and chief end of His works?” Edwards answered this question by arguing that God desiresHis own glory and the glory of each Person in the Godhead above all things. God did not create man because he needed an object to love.[25] God needs nothing.[26] God created man in order to glorify His own triune love through redemption:
In all this God designed to accomplish the glory of the blessed Trinity in an exceeding degree. God had a design of glorifying himself from eternity, to glorify each person in the Godhead. The end must be considered as first in the order of nature and then the means, and therefore we must conceive that God having proposed this end had then, as it were, the means to choose. And the principal means that he pitched [upon] was this great Work of Redemption that we are speaking [of]. It was his design in this work to glorify his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, in this great work, and it was his design by the Son to glorify the Father,John 13:31–32["Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself,"] andJohn 17:1["glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee"]. And [also] that the Son should thus be glorified and should glorify the Father by what should be accomplished by the Spirit to the glory of the Spirit, that the whole Trinity conjunctly and each person singly might be exceedingly glorified.[27]
God created to glorify His triune loveby communicating His intra-Trinitarian love outside of Himself through redeeming sinners. God created image-bearers so that He could glorify Himself in their reflection of Him, in His saving love for them, and in their love for Him as Father and in their love for one another as brothers and sisters. God would accomplish man’s redemption and each Person of the Trinity would fulfill His role to reveal and magnify God’s triune love.
Therefore, due to God’s intra-Trinitarian love, God planned to send forth His saving love to sinners, redeeming them as His own sons and daughters.[28]GodpursuedHis purpose for creationfirst, throughcreating man in His own image.[29]Edwards argued,
When God was about to create the world, he had respect to that emanation of his glory, which is actually the consequence of the creation, both with regard to himself and the creature. He had regard to it as an emanation from himself, a communication of himself, and, as the thing communicated, in its nature returned to himself, as its final term. And he had regard to it also as the emanation was to the creature, and as the thing communicated was in the creature, as its subject.[30]
God created all things for the purpose of expressing, revealing, and reflecting His own glory. God’s fingerprints are ever-present on His creation reflecting His glory back to Him. Mankind, especiallywas created in God’s image because God loves Himself and sought to communicate His Trinitarian love to His creatures. When God created all things in the beginning, He called his creation “good” (Gen. 1:31).He created for the purpose of reflecting His own love back to Him. Mankind was made in God’s image and was set apart from the rest of creation:
God created man in his own image, inspired him with a heavenly ray, gave him noble and excellent powers. This is evident to reason. And the beasts are left without those faculties that man has, whereby he is able to meditate on God, or the first cause of all things, to see him who is invisible, and see future and eternal things.[31]
God set mankind apartfor the purpose of reflecting God in a way that the rest of creation does not and cannot. Although all creation reflects God’s glory, only mankind reflects Him. Only mankind was meant to participate in the Godhead relationally as God’s image-bearer through union with Christ. Mankind reflects God’s ontology in a creaturely way. Edwards wrote,
The special end for which God made mankind, is something very diverse and very superior to those ends for which he made any parts of the inferior creation. Because God has made man very different from them; he has vastly distinguished him, in the nature that he has given him, and faculties with which he has endowed him, and the place he has set him in in the creation. Now, if he has made man for nothing different from what he has made other creatures, then he hath thus done in vain.[32]
Mankind alone bears God’s image. Other creatures and the rest of creation do not. This reality begs the question, “In what way did God distinguish man from the rest of creation?” Edwards affirmed that man was made in God’s image, but what does this image consist of? Specifically, Edwards believed that God’s image in man corresponds to God’s ontology, God’s own attributes. As mentioned earlier, Edwards divided God’s attributes into two categories, moral and natural.[33] God’s moral image issummarized as God’s love and holiness; man was created in God’s image to love as God loves and to be holy as God is holy.[34] God’s natural image consists of His knowledge, power, etc.; man was created in God’s image to reason,to understand God and His creation, to exercise dominion over God’s creation, etc.[35]Edwards argued,
As there are two kinds of attributes in God, according to our way of conceiving of him, his moral attributes, which are summed up in his holiness, and his natural attributes, of strength, knowledge, etc. that constitute the greatness of God; so there is a twofold image of God in man, his moral or spiritual image, which is his holiness, that is the image of God’s moral excellency (which image was lost by the Fall); and God’s natural image, consisting in men’s reason and understanding, his natural ability, and dominion over the creatures, which is the image of God’s natural attributes.[36]
Since there are two kinds of attributes in God, it follows that in His creating of man in His image, He would place these two kinds of attributes in man as well. Therefore, to Edwards, man is literally a creaturely mirror of God’s ontology and function.
Furthermore, not only does God’s image in man mirror God’s attributes, His image also testifies of His triune identity. God’s act in creating was not an act carried out by only one member of the Trinity. Remember that Edwards believed that God created for the purpose of glorifying His triune love. God the Father, God the Son, and the God the Holy Spirit were all especially involved in the creation of man. After all, in Genesis 1:26 God said, “let us make man,” which Edwards argued was “a consultation of the persons of the Trinity about the creation of man,
for every person had his particular and distinct concern in it, as well as in the redemption of man. The Father employed the Son and the Holy Ghost in this work. The Son endued man with understanding and reason. The Holy Ghost endued him with a holy will and inclination, with original righteousness.[37]
The Trinity was actively involved in creating man in God’s image. The Father had the Son create man to mirror God’s natural attributes (knowledge, power, etc.). The Father also had the Holy Spirit create man to mirror God’s moral attributes (love, holiness, etc.).When man uses his natural attributes for God’s glory, he mirrors God and testifies of the handiwork of God the Father and God the Son. When man uses his moral attributes, he mirrors God and testifies of the handiwork of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. All three Persons of the Trinity created man in God’s image for the overarching purpose of reflecting God back to Him. In Edwards’ theology, the redemption of man is the apex of God’s triune reflection in man.