On Edwards

Yesterday, I posted a summary of an article by James Torrance that makes disparaging comments about Jonathan Edwards.  Joe Rigney of Bethlehem College and Seminary writes in defense of Edwards.  The remainder of this post is from Rigney.

“it’s Edwards view of the Trinity and God’s attributes that made me resonate with Torrance’s affirmation of the oneness of justice and love for God. Edwards’ appropriation of the psychological model of the Trinity led him to conclude that, properly speaking, there are only two ‘attributes’ of God: knowledge (which corresponds to the Son) and love/joy (which corresponds to the Spirit). All other attributes, by our way of regarding them, are simply these two attributes in a variety of ‘degrees, circumstances, and relations.’

“Practically speaking, this means that the retributive justice or wrath of God is simply what the love of God for God looks like when it encounters human rebellion and pride . . . .

“Likewise, compassion or mercy is what the love of God looks like when it encounters lost, broken, and pitiable creatures. Thus, while it may be that this Trinitarian insight hadn’t worked its way into Edwards’ federal theology, it was nonetheless present, and indeed, it is telling that Edwards’ argued that Adam relied upon the grace of God prior to the fall: ‘Man hath now a greater dependence on the grace of God than he had before the fall. He depends on the free goodness of God for much more than he did then. Then he depended on God’s goodness for conferring the reward of perfect obedience; for God was not obliged to promise and bestow that reward. But now we are dependent on the grace of God for much more; we stand in need of grace, not only to bestow glory upon us, but to deliver us from hell and eternal wrath. Under the first covenant we depended on God’s goodness to give us the reward of righteousness; and so we do now; but we stand in need of God’s free and sovereign grace to give us that righteousness; to pardon our sin, and release us from the guilt and infinite demerit of it’ (Jonathan Edwards,  God Glorified in the Work of Redemption ).

“In this light, it may be telling that Piper, shaped as he is by Edwards, regards the covenant of works as essentially gracious in his book  Future Grace . I believe that Doug quoted this book in precisely this regard during his examination by the session of Christ Church on the Federal Vision.”