The Works of Jonathan edwards

Yale University Press

Chapter One

According to Thomas A. Schafer, Edwards began the manuscript of what he called the "Discourse on the Trinity" (otherwise known as "Essay on the Trinity") in early 1730, when he wrote eight folio pages in a short time. He was able to write at such a pace because he could draw upon numerous "Miscellanies" entries on the topic written up to that time. He later went back over these eight pages, making some changes, soon after their original composition, struggling to improve the language and clarify the thought. Edwards' intention for the composition is unclear; he put it aside for some time, apparently several years.

When in the mid- or late 1730s he took up the manuscript again, he added another folio signature (pp. 9-12), as well as an additional leaf or signature that is now missing. The additions are of two kinds and perhaps reflect Edwards' changing perception of the piece as a whole. At first he tried to improve the original portion of the essay by signaling additions, via cue marks, to particular passages. Probably in the early to mid-1740s, however, he simply started appending discrete entries without connecting them to earlier passages. This latter phase suggests that Edwards came to view the manuscript as a source book rather than as an autonomous statement, a speculation borne out by his willingness to cannibalize it for other works such as A Divine and Supernatural Light, Treatise on Grace, and Religious Affections. All the same, there are no use marks.

The first part of the "Discourse" is taken up with describing the persons of the Trinity, particularly the Son and the Holy Spirit. God, Edwards begins, is infinitely happy in the enjoyment and contemplation of himself, which engenders a "perfect idea of himself." Thus the Deity is "repeated." God's idea of himself is "the express and perfect image of himself" and is a "spiritual idea," or the repetition of all of God's memories, exercises, and powers-that is, a replication of God, or God himself again. This is confirmed by scriptural descriptions of the Second Person, where the Son is the "image" and "face" of God, the "brightness, effulgence and shining forth of God's glory," the "wisdom," "logos," and "Amen" of God. Between the Father and Son exists a mutual love, joy, and delight, a "pure act," or the "Deity in act," which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and Son for each other, the love that "quickens and enlivens" creation and created spirits, and comforts God's people. Again, Scripture confirms this definition by describing the Holy Spirit as a dove, a symbol of love; scriptural types and similitudes of the Holy Spirit are oil, water, fire, breath, and wind, all of which connote a "flowing out." So the saints' communion with God consists in partaking of the Holy Spirit, or God's love. This is why, in the New Testament, Paul's greetings always mention the love and grace of the Father and Son, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.

In the next section, Edwards moves on from a discussion of the persons in themselves to a consideration of their shared qualities. He reiterates that the Deity can be understood as God, understanding, and love-everything else is a "mode or relation of existence." All the persons are co-essential and co-eternal, yet each has his distinct office; all have equal honor, are equally concerned in the work of redemption, and garner equal glory from it; and all believers are equally dependent upon each person of the Trinity in redemption. At this point Edwards, seeking to correct what he sees as a prevailing tendency to neglect the Third Person, expands upon the role of the Holy Spirit in order to claim its equal importance and honor. Edwards ends this section of the "Discourse" (bringing us to page eight) by mentioning two images of the Trinity in the "visible creation": the human soul with its various faculties, and the sun, its constitution, rays, and "beautiful colors."

In the entries added after the mid-1730s, Edwards refines the language of the earlier discussion and attempts to reach further into the complexities of the relationships of the three persons. He repeats his realization that there are many objections that can be raised against his view, and reasserts the mysterious nature of the topic. Edwards then assembles Scripture texts on the Son and Holy Ghost, setting the tone for the remaining entries. The end of creation is for the gratification of the Son, including "providing a spouse for Christ," namely, the elect. A stray quarto fragment contains a collection of short entries alternating between the Son and Holy Spirit, the order of their proceeding, and their place in the economy of the Trinity.

The "Discourse on the Trinity" was the subject of some controversy in the late nineteenth century. In 1851 Horace Bushnell wrote that he had heard of a manuscript in which Edwards espoused an "a priori argument for the Trinity," and demanded that it be published because he had not been allowed to see it. Word spread that Edwards was a closet Arian, Sabellian, or Pelagian. In 1880 Oliver Wendell Holmes echoed Bushnell's earlier challenge to publish the document. That same year Egbert Smyth of Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts published "Miscellanies" no. 1062, Observations Concerning the Scripture Economy of the Trinity and Covenant of Redemption, under the mistaken idea that this was the document in question. The following year Edwards A. Park published a two-part article on Edwards and the Trinity and pointed to the existence of a separate writing on the Trinity, which he claimed to own but added, characteristically, that he had misplaced it. The manuscript was eventually discovered and published in 1903 by George P. Fisher under the title "Essay on the Trinity." The title given here, "Discourse on the Trinity," not only follows Edwards' own appellation but is also more reflective of the early eighteenth-century conception of an intellectual exercise as opposed to the more nineteenth-century "essay."

Fisher's edition contains the text of the twelve folio pages, but since then a quarto-sized signature (made from a folded letter cover) discovered elsewhere in the Yale collection has been restored to the "Discourse." The content of this errant fragment is published here for the first time. That this signature was once a part of the "Discourse" is confirmed not only by its similar subject matter but also by stitch holes on its fold corresponding exactly to those in the folio pages. However, the original place of the quarto signature cannot be precisely determined, so its text is presented at the end of the "Discourse."

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 ever before him and in actual view. And from hence arises a most pure and perfect energy in the God-head, which is the divine love, complacence and joy.

Though we cannot conceive of the manner of the divine understanding, yet if it be understanding or anything that can be...