Edwards on Union

Ross Hastings argues in Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God that union in the Spirit is the center of Edwards’s theology: “union is a significant driving force in Edwards’s Trinitarian theology, if not its overarching trope, and that his theology essentially tells a ‘from eternity, to eternity’ story of three unions in the Spirit: the eternal union within the Trinity of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit, the union in history of the human and divine natures of Christ by the Spirit, and the union of the saints with God by the Spirit. The theme of union and especially the union last mentioned—participational union of the saints, or theosis—influences Edwards’s view of salvation to such an extent that it makes ecumenical dialogue possible on the matters of justification and sanctification.”

Somewhat more elaborately: “Edward’s theology centers on a God who, as Trinity, is the union of three persons, the supreme harmony of all reality. This God sent his only Son so that his divine nature might be brought into union with human nature by the incarnation, in order that he might accomplish the salvation of humans by bringing them into union with the triune God. Edwards’s massive theological and pastoral contribution is, as Marilyn McCord Adams says, not ‘fuelled by the fires of hell but enlightened by the glory of the Trinity.’ His theology and moral vision are preoccupied with the psychological and social analogies of the Trinity, particularly by the role of the union of the saints with the inner life of the Trinity through the indwelling of the Spirit. Edwards is, in fact, a theologian of participation par excellence. An important motif in his theology, the theme of beauty provides an apt illustration. Edwards defines beauty in terms of God’s triune harmony, in which the saints and creation participate. Inherent in the harmony of the communion of the Divine persons in the immanent Trinity, beauty is communicated to creation in God’s free creative act and by his redemptive work.”

In all this, the emphasis is on the role of the Spirit. Even more than Calvin, Edwards deserves the title “theologian of the Holy Spirit.” In short, “Edwards’s theology is a pneumatology. Whether in his doctrine of God (theology proper), his understanding of the incarnate Son of God (Christology), his doctrine of humanity (anthropology), his doctrine of salvation (soteriology), or his doctrine of future things (eschatology), he posits the Spirit as the union of all reality (the means of communion within God) in the incarnate God-Man as well as between God and the people of God and, therefore, between God and creation.”

The ultimate aim of history is to glorify God, but this is done as God glorifies the church in the Son by the Spirit: “When the church is glorified at the end of history, God will have glorified himself because the church is glorified in the glorified Son, and all will be glorious harmony in the cosmos. The glorious union of the saints with God, in Christ, by the Spirit, will be eternal; at the same time, however, it will be eternally progressive, always moving towards complete likeness to Christ but never arriving (in mathematical terms, asymptotic) at identity as Christ. . . . In the eschatos (last) Adam, the church will reign over a cosmos that eternally reflects God’s own harmonious and beautiful Trinitarian union, which, having emanated from him, now remanates back to him in an even more glorious state, having been redeemed in Christ.”