God's Grand Design: The Theological Vision of Jonathan Edwards

by Sean Michael Lucas

Overview

Jonathan Edwards was a preacher, pastor, revivalist, and theologian. This volume unpacks his magnificent theological vision, which starts with God's glory and ends with all creation returning to that glory. 

Sean Michael Lucas has converted his years of teaching on Edwards into this valuable work, which places Edwards's vision in an accessible, two-part framework. Part one focuses on Edwards's understanding of redemption history—God's cosmic, grand work from eternity past to eternity future, where all things are united in Christ. Part two examines Edwards's perspective on "redemption applied"—how that gracious, divine work unfolds in space and time to personally transform individuals, stirring their affections, illuminating their minds, and moving their wills to form new habits and practices.

This overview of Edwards's theology will prove to be a thought-provoking, encouraging guide to contemporary believers at every stage of their spiritual journey. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433524455
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	10/05/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	556 KB

About the Author

Sean Michael Lucas (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the senior minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and associate professor of church history at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He previously taught at Covenant Theological Seminary for five years, serving as the chief academic officer.

Sean Michael Lucas (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the senior minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and associate professor of church history at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He previously taught at Covenant Theological Seminary for five years, serving as the chief academic officer.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

God's Grand Design

The Glory of God

It had been four years since the glow of revival began to fade in Northampton, Massachusetts. The "surprising work of God" had once again become the hum of the regular works of men and women in their day-to-day lives. As the pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton and the one responsible for the spiritual condition of these folks, Jonathan Edwards wrestled with how to lead his people to experience once again the spiritual renewal that came through heightened, holy affections.

During this period, Edwards tried to remind his people of their spiritual experiences by publishing accounts of the awakenings for the Anglo-American world. By 1737, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God had become a key piece of the religious propaganda of the period, serving as both a report of the religious revival and a model of how such renewal might happen in other locations. The following year he also published key sermons from the 1734–1735 awakening, expanding his sermon "Justification by Faith Alone," as well as adding other successful revival sermons.

In addition, Edwards began to experiment with the sermon model. The period from 1734 to 1742 saw his greatest creativity as a preacher. He preached several long series on single texts, leading his congregation to consider 2 Corinthians 13:5, 1 Corinthians 13, Matthew 25:1–12, and 1 Peter 1:8 in multiunit sermon series. The greatest of these sermonic experiments was his thirty unit sermon on Isaiah 51:8, preached over six months in 1739, which has come to u s as "A History of the Work of Redemption." Historian John Wilson held that these sermons represented "a new and different kind of project" in which Edwards "transformed" the structure of the sermon in order to accomplish his larger purpose.

Edwards's larger purpose was to raise his congregation's vision from its apparently mundane and petty daily concerns to find their affections engaged by the cosmic purpose that God has in his work of redemption. And God's grand design in the work of redemption was nothing less than his own glory.

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.

Far from focusing on a merely individual salvation, Edwards rooted his understanding of the Christian life in the cosmic purpose of God himself — namely, for God to glorify himself and enjoy himself forever.

Far from wanting an abstract theological construction with little bearing on actual Christian living, Edwards recognized that only as Christians have their vision filled with God's grand purpose to glorify himself through his work of redemption are their affections transformed, their wills moved, and their beings engaged in benevolence toward all creation. Yet in order for believers truly to grasp such a vision, they need to see that God's purpose to glorify himself through creation and redemption is an outflow of his own eternal being.

Trinity

Edwards's theology of the Christian life is profoundly Trinitarian. As he said in his sermons on God's work of redemption, God purposed to glorify each person of the Trinity in his grand design. And yet, God's design was much more expansive than this. Edwards suggests that God's purpose was to draw human beings into God's own glorious life that they might share in and reflect back divine love and glory.

The Psychological Analogy

God's own being as Trinity served as a key building block in Edwards's theological development, and Edwards staked out his position early in his ministry. In an entry in his "Miscellanies," written when he was twenty years old, Edwards offered a defense of the Trinity based on the dictates of "naked reason." Drawing from a version of the psychological analogy pioneered by Augustine in the fourth century, Edwards assumed that God exists and that God posits certain ideas about himself. These ideas of himself are unmediated and perfect; God's self-perception serves as a type of perfect mirror or image. Such an image has of necessity always existed since God himself has always existed; just as God had no beginning, this self-reflection had no beginning either. It is "eternally begotten," as it were.

Further, as God contemplates this perfect idea of himself, God naturally delights in this self-reflection. As he sees his perfections, he delights in them; as this has occurred eternally, so God has had eternal and infinite delight in himself. But it is more; since this idea of himself is a perfect reflection of God, this idea returns God's own delight. A cycle of delight passes between God and his image; indeed, infinite love and "an infinitely sweet energy we call delight," which is a pure act, move between God and his idea. And thus, Edwards has "proved" the Trinity: "God, the idea of God, and delight in God."

In this analogy, God the Father contemplates the expressed, eternally begotten, image of himself, God the Son; the delight that eternally processes between them is God the Holy Spirit. Edwards would extend this analogy, but never abandon it. While there are undoubtedly problems with this understanding, it is foundational for his understanding of the being of God within God's self (ad intra).

Edwards would replicate this understanding and expand it in a manuscript that he worked on periodically throughout the 1730s. There he would once again argue that when we speak of God's happiness, the account that we are wont to give of it is that God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself, in perfectly beholding and infinitely loving, and rejoicing in, his own essence and perfections. And accordingly it must be supposed that God perpetually and eternally has a most perfect idea of himself, as it were an exact image and representation of himself. ... And from hence arises a most pure and perfect energy in the Godhead, which is the divine love, complacence and joy.

In other words, God's own happiness is at the very center of who God is.

The Social Analogy

But Edwards would also utilize another analogy for understanding the Trinity, the social analogy. A twelfth century theologian named Richard St. Victor apparently pioneered this understanding in the Western church, although it had a rich history in the Eastern Orthodox Church going back to the Cappadocian fathers. Edwards described the Trinity as a "society or family of the three." All three of the persons in the Godhead have understanding and will, but each exercises his understanding and will in a specific way as part of the divine economy. All three share honor, but each receives a "peculiar honor in the society or family." All three agree in the work of redemption, but each has a specific role in that work and receives honor for that particular role.

And so, from all eternity, God's own inner being was one of utter delight and love among the three. As God enjoyed eternal happiness in himself, receiving glory and honor from himself and returning glory and honor to himself, he was utterly satisfied in himself. As Edwards noted, "It is evident, by both Scripture and reason, that God is infinitely, eternally, unchangeably, and independently glorious and happy: that he stands in no need of, cannot be profited by, or receive anything from the creature."

Although God was utterly satisfied within his own inner Trinitarian life, the wonder is that he decided to create the earth and populate it with human beings. According to Edwards, God's ultimate purpose in creating the world was

to communicate of his own infinite fullness of God; or rather it was his last end, that there might be a glorious and abundant emanation of his infinite fullness of good ad extra, or without himself, and the disposition to communicate himself or diffuse his own fullness, which we must conceive of as being originally in God as a perfection of his nature, was what moved him to create the world.

Edwards is saying something incredibly profound: God's purpose in creating was to communicate the fullness of Trinitarian delight outside himself.

However, that is not all. God not only desires to communicate (or emanate) the overflow of his goodness and glory, but also desires for that goodness and glory to return (or to be remanated) to himself. This goodness and glory will return to God in the happiness and delight of his creation. In an early "Miscellanies" entry, Edwards observed that the happiness of the saints would be "as transcendent as the glory of God, seeing it is the same." As the saints know the happiness that comes in response to the manifestation of God's glory and excellency, they reflect back to God his own glory. God's fullness is communicated and returned in a never-ending cycle of love.

This was part of the grand benefit that Christ secured for his people through his redemption: that they would be included in this Trinitarian world of happiness and delight. "Christ has brought it to pass," Edwards noted, "that those that the Father has given him should be brought into the household of God, that he and his Father and they should be as it were one society, one family; that his people should be in a sort admitted into that society of the three persons in the Godhead." Here, then, is the connecting point back to Edwards's sermons on the work of redemption: Christ's redemption accomplishes God's grand design of drawing God's redeemed creation into the Trinitarian life that they might participate and communicate in the eternal happiness of God.

Covenant

This grand design of the triune God — that of drawing redeemed creation into the very life of heaven — is accomplished by means of covenant. Edwards noted this truth in the very first sermon in his series "A History of the Work of Redemption." "There were many things done in order to the Work of Redemption before [the fall]. Some things were done before the world was created, yea from all eternity," he preached. "The persons of the Trinity were as it were confederated in a design and a coven ant of redemption, in which the Father appointed the Son and the Son had undertaken their work, and all things to be accomplished in their work were stipulated and agreed." In order to accomplish his purpose of glorifying himself, God established a covenant.

In Edwards's understanding, the covenantal structure of God's dealing with human beings involves the covenants of redemption, works, and grace.

The Covenant of Redemption

As the language from "A History of the Work of Redemption" demonstrates, Edwards's understanding of the covenant of redemption had two elements: it was pretemporal and it was intra-Trinitarian. Edwards held that Christ covenanted with the other two members of the Godhead before the foundation of the world to purchase the salvation of the elect, and in so doing to glorify God himself.

The Covenant of Works

Edwards also developed a thorough understanding of a prelapsarian (i.e., prefall) covenant of works. God made a covenant with Adam, who stood as a representative of his posterity. Edwards wrote,

It must appear to every impartial person, that Moses' account does, with sufficient evidence, lead all mankind, to whom this account is communicated, to understand that God, in constitution[covenant] with Adam, dealt with him as a public person, and as the head of the human species, and had respect to his posterity as included in him.

Adam stood as a forefather and representative for all humanity.

In establishing this covenant, God required perfect obedience from Adam. If Adam had satisfied the divine demand, he would have received reward: "If Adam had stood and persevered in obedience, he would have been made happy by mere bounty and goodness; for God was not obliged to reward Adam for his perfect obedience any otherwise than by covenant, for Adam by standing would not have merited happiness." Adam would not have received reward solely for merit; rather, God would grant "reward" because he chose to make covenant with Adam and to require certain conditions. In other words, the ground of reward was God's own free promise; the condition was obedience.

Even more, if Adam had obeyed, his posterity would have received the blessing of eternal life. "If Adam had stood and got the victory, all his posterity would have had a right to the reward without another trial," Edwards held. "The first Adam was to have performed the condition of life; his posterity were not properly to perform any condition." All that Adam's posterity would have need ed to do to enjoy reward was to be born. Adam would have been invited to eat from the tree of life "as a seal of his reward." Death would have been "put out of all possibility" for Adam and his posterity. "He now enjoyed life, but if he had stood he would have been called to the tree of life to eat of that, and his life should not only have been ascertained to him forever, but he would have advanced to a higher degree of life" and a "much greater happiness."

Although Adam did not obey, the covenant of works was not abrogated. Instead, it remains as an eternal and immutable covenant with its demands against humankind in full force. Edwards suggested that "if we speak of the covenant God has made with man stating the condition of eternal life, God never made but one with man, to wit, the covenant of works; which never yet was abrogated but is a covenant [that] stands in full force to all eternity without the failing of one tittle." In Edwards's estimation, the one covenant that God has made with humankind is not one of grace, but one of works. God's requirement for humankind throughout history is the same as for Adam in the garden, namely, perfect obedience.

This requirement for humankind was restated in the Ten Commandments. Edwards equivocated a bit on whether the Ten Commandments served as a restatement of the covenant of works or as a rule of life for believers. On the one hand, "the covenant of works was here [in the Ten Commandments] exhibited to be as a schoolmaster to lead to Christ, not only for the use of that nation in the ages of the Old Testament, but for the use of God's church throughout all ages to the end of the world." God's demand for perfect obedience is restated in the moral law; the threatening of future judgment for the failure of obedience is brought to bear; and the longing for a Redeemer who could satisfy God's wrath and fulfill the law's demand is created.

On the other hand, "if we regard this law now given at Mount Sinai not as a covenant of works but as a rule of life, so it is made use [of] by the Redeemer from that time to the end of the world as a directory to his people, to show them the way in which they must walk, as they would go to heaven." The Ten Commandments then serve as a rule of life to guide the regenerate in the life that pleases God. The law drives men and women to Jesus; and Jesus drives men and women back to the law.

The Covenant of Grace

However the Ten Commandments are understood, the fact is that the continuing demand of the covenant of works remains a major problem for humankind. Because of Adam's fall, his posterity was plunged into a condition of sin and misery. Original righteousness was lost; corruption came to characterize every thought, word, and deed. Perfect and perpetual obedience became impossible. And so, God in his mercy sent Jesus as the new mediator of the covenant, the covenant of grace. But for Edwards, the covenant of grace is not different from the covenant of works; rather, he holds the two together: "The covenant of grace is not another covenant made with man upon the abrogation of [the covenant of works], but a covenant made with Christ to fulfill [the covenant of works]. And for this end came Christ into the world, to fulfill the law, or covenant of works, for all that receive him." There are not really two covenants, but one, and the covenant of works becomes the covenant of grace for those who trust in Jesus.

(Continues…)

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Copyright © 2011 Sean Michael Lucas.
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Table of Contents

Introduction, 11,
Part 1: Redemption History,
1 God's Grand Design: The Glory of God, 21,
2 God's End in Creating the World: Creation, Nature, Fall, 35,
3 The Great Errand of Christ: Redemption, 47,
4 The Summum and Ultimum: Consummation, 61,
Part 2: Redemption Applied,
5 A Divine and Supernatural Light, 77,
6 The Nature of True Religion: Holy Affections, 89,
7 The Dark Side of Religious Affections: Self-Deception, 103,
8 A Love Life: How the Affections Produce Genuine Virtue, 117,
9 Means of Grace: The Ministry of the Word, 133,
10 Means of Grace: The Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, 147,
11 Means of Grace: Prayer, Personal and Global, 161,
12 The Christian Life as a Journey to Heaven, 173,
Appendix 1: "Where Do I Begin?": An Annotated Bibliography, 191,
Appendix 2: "A Man Just Like Us": Jonathan Edwards and Spiritual Formation for Ministerial Candidates, 207,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Those of us trundling through the complete works of Jonathan Edwards in the recent Yale edition are grateful for experts like Sean Lucas who, with a single lucid paragraph, are able to unravel the most complex of Edwardian thought. The study of Edwards has become something of a ‘rite of passage’ in recent days and some of us have some catching up to do. Dr. Lucas, a well-respected Edwards scholar in his own right, has given us a comprehensive summary of Edwards’s understanding of the Christian life that does for Edwards what Sinclair Ferguson did for John Owen. An essential and most welcome companion to any serious study of Edwards.”
—Derek W. H. Thomas, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic and Pastoral Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary; Teaching Fellow, Ligonier Ministries

“This is an edifying book on a most edifying person, one who became the most important pastor in all of American history. By focusing our attention on what mattered most to Edwards—authentic Christian living that derives from God’s grace and reflects God’s glory—Sean Lucas has written a book that can draw you nearer to God, even make you a better person. Good theology, well presented, leads to passionate, godly piety. Edwards and Lucas know this well. I pray that you will know it too.”
—Douglas A. Sweeney, Dean and Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

“Sean Michael Lucas analyzes the ways that Jonathan Edwards understood the Christian life as both inconceivably vast and intensely personal and practical, demonstrating that there is still much to be learned from America's greatest philosopher-theologian. From his Introduction to the two invaluable Appendices, Lucas offers an eminently useful volume that reminds one of much of Edwards's own writing—technical yet accessible, scholarly yet pastoral.”
—Richard A. Bailey, Associate Professor of History, Canisius College; author, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England

“It is good for the church—and the heart—to see Sean Lucas, a modern pastor-theologian, working with such depth and clarity in the corpus of Jonathan Edwards, America's preeminent pastor-theologian. Lucas shows a mastery of the vast secondary and primary sources on and by Edwards, yet writes to be understood and to bless the church. If there is a better way to honor the New Light minister, I am not aware of it.”
—Owen Strachan, Associate Professor of Christian Theology, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; coauthor, The Grand Design; coeditor, Designed for Joy