Jonathan Edwards on the Trinity

In the 1700s, Jonathan Edwards, one of the great preachers of the Great Awakening, wrote a speculative essay on the trinitarian nature of God. Many consider the exact nature of the Trinity too great a mystery to be comprehended. Edwards agreed:

But I don’t pretend to fully explain how these things are and I am sensible a hundred other objections may be made and puzzling doubts and questions raised that I can’t solve. I am far from pretending to explain the Trinity so as to render it no longer a mystery. . . . I don’t intend to explain the Trinity.”

Then why ponder and write about the Trinity? Edwards writes because his love for God only grows the more he comes to know him. He explains, “His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart” (italics added). John Piper discusses this essay, and he summarizes Edwards’ reason for writing:

In other words, God gets glory from his creatures in worship by our knowing him truly, and by our enjoying him duly. . . . Essential to glorify God is seeing him clearly and savoring him dearly.”

In his essay, Jonathan Edwards offers a possible explanation for the nature of the Godhead, an attempt to better understand, or know, God so that he may better glorify him.

As an important aside, know that Edwards does not reject any orthodox or credal doctrines. Beyond what is covered here, Edwards even refutes a few “sensible” objections he foresees.

Here is Edwards’ basic argument. In summary,

This I suppose to be that blessed Trinity that we read of in the holy Scriptures. The Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, 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.”

And what follows is an attempt to elucidate this rich, packed paragraph.

Ontological arguments, like Aquinas’ or Anselm’s, begin with a first cause, or prime mover. Something does not spring forth from nothing. It cannot. God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is this prime mover. He is transcendent, not contained by time or space. He has always existed. There was never a time when he was not. He simply is.

Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am’” (John 8:58).

He is self-existent, not aided by human hands (Acts 17:25).

The Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence.

Edwards does not make an argument for the existence of God here, though. He takes that as a given. He begins his explanation with God the Father. The Father subsists in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner. “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). He is who he is. The Father is God.

The Son is the Deity generated by God’s understanding or having an idea of himself, and subsisting in that idea.

Christian orthodoxy teaches that God is omniscient; he knows all things. Plus, there is no yesterday for God, for he transcends time. And besides this, he is totally perfect. Humans can share in each of these attributes of God. Humans are capable of knowing quite a lot and can remember the past, in many cases vividly. And, every good quality found within humans is an imperfect copy of an attribute God perfectly embodies. By utilizing each of these, humans often know themselves very well. To a degree, we can think of ourselves in the third person. Imagine the degree to which God the Father knows himself, being omniscient, transcendent, and perfect! Since before time, the Father has perfectly known, and loved and enjoyed, all things about himself.

Hence, Edwards reasons God the Son’s existence. He takes the understanding or idea the Father has of himself to be the Son. He figures the idea the Father has of himself to be so full, powerful, vivid, and real, so perfectly perfect, that it is itself the second person of the Trinity. As Edwards puts it,

Therefore as God with perfect clearness, fullness and strength understands himself, views his own essence (in which there is no distinction of substance and act, but it is wholly substance and wholly act), that idea which God hath of himself is absolutely himself. . . . So that by God’s thinking of the Deity, [the Deity] must certainly be generated.”

Piper paraphrases,

In other words, the Son exists eternally in God’s ‘having an idea of himself’ – a knowledge of himself that carries such a fullness of the divine being that the idea stands forth as a divine Person in his own right, fully God.

This, most would probably think, seems far-fetched and purely speculative, but there are a few places in Scripture that may lend credence to Edwards’ strange idea. Hebrews 1:3, speaking of the Son, reads, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” Or, “He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Or Philippians 2:6, “Though he was in the form of God . . .” Another, “. . . the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And another , “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And lastly, “. . . Christ the power of God and the wisdom [think understanding or idea] of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24).

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.

For Edwards, the Holy Spirit arises from the mutual, active love between the Father and the Son. The love, delight, and pleasure shared within the Trinity is so divinely great that the Holy Spirit proceeds as the actual expression of that love. It is bizarre, but I certainly do not deal justly with his idea. So here are his words:

There proceeds a most pure act, and an infinitely holy and sweet energy arises between the Father and Son: for their love and joy is mutual, in mutually loving and delighting in each other. . . . This is the eternal and most perfect and essential act of the divine nature, wherein the Godhead acts to an infinite degree and in the most perfect manner possible. The Deity becomes all act.”

And here is Piper’s paraphrase:

In other words, the love between the Father and the Son is so perfect, so constant, and carries so completely all that the Father and the Son are in themselves, that this love stands forth itself as a person in his own right.”

It is still strange, but consider first a more cogitable analogy C.S. Lewis provides, remembering that it is merely an imperfect analogy, then a few Scripture passages. Lewis writes,

You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club or a trades union, people talk about the “spirit” of that family, club or trades union. They talk about its Spirit because the individual members, when they’re together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they wouldn’t have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. . . . [Likewise], what grows out of the joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three persons who are God.”

If the Holy Spirit is the expression of God’s love, 1 John 4 may help Edwards’ point. Verse 8 says that “God is love,” and verse 12 reads, “If we love one another, God  [God the Holy Spirit, as is confirmed later in verse 13] abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (italics added). Consider this. Not only is God love, as Edwards claims the Holy Spirit is, but also verse 12 suggests that God’s indwelling is or at least causes the perfection of love in believers, which makes sense if God the Holy Spirit is love.

In other places, Scripture seems to treat love and the Holy Spirit synonymously. For instance, “. . . by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned” (2 Corinthians 6:6). Romans 15:30 reads, “I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit. . .” Or Romans 5:5: “. . .God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Finally, consider God the Son’s baptism, particularly Matthew 3:16-17.

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’”

Notice, when God the Father wishes to express pleasure with the Son, he does so through the Spirit of God. Is this not to be expected if the Holy Spirit is the expression of God’s love, delight, and pleasure? In addition, Edwards even connects the dove to the Old Testament as a symbol of love used especially in the Song of Solomon.

In conclusion, consider an analogy Edwards proposes. Edwards defines the Trinity as the Father (the eternal substance), the Son (the perfect, eternal image of the Father), and the Holy Spirit (the mutually active love that is eternally shared between the persons of the Trinity). Edwards likens this relationship to the sun.

The father is as the substance of the Sun. (By substance I don’t mean in a philosophical sense, but the Sun as to its internal constitution.) The Son is as the brightness and glory of the disk of the Sun or that bright and glorious form under which it appears to our eyes. The Holy Ghost is the action of the Sun which is within the Sun in its intestine heat, and, being diffusive, enlightens, warms, enlivens and comforts the world. The Spirit as it is God’s Infinite love to Himself and happiness in Himself, is as the internal heat of the Sun, but as it is that by which God communicates Himself, it is as the emanation of the sun’s action, or the emitted beams of the sun.”