Continuing the thread from last week, here is another miscellany dealing with the incarnation of Christ. In this entry, Edwards focuses on Christ’s sinlessness.

386. INCARNATION.

Christ, although he was conceived in the womb of one of fallen mankind, yet he was conceived without sin; because he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, which is divine love and holiness itself. That which infinite holiness and love immediately forms, it is impossible that it should have any sin.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 454.

Recently, Yale University Press announced the upcoming publication of a case book for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” This looks like it will be of great value as new generations of readers, and especially students, study this infamous piece. Here is the description provided by the publisher:

Designed specifically for the classroom, this volume presents the accurate and definitive version of Sinners, accompanied by the tools necessary to study and teach this famous American sermon. With an introduction aimed at students and teachers and commentary that draws on fifty years of team editorial experience of Yale’s Works of Jonathan Edwards, it provides both context and interpretation, and addresses the concerns and questions of a twenty-first century audience.

The book contains questions for in-class discussion, a chronology of Edwards’s life, and a glossary. In addition, curricular materials and video mini-presentations are available on a dedicated Web site. This casebook represents an innovative contribution to the art of teaching Edwards to a new generation of readers.

Available Mar 01, 2010

With just a few days left until Christmas, it’s always good to take time to remember the true meaning of the holiday. In this week’s installment of Miscellany Mondays, we have a brief, yet profound, statement on the meaning and purpose of the incarnation of Christ. The idea of Christ’s communion with his church, and the church’s resulting communion with the Triune God is a major theme in Edwards’s work, and one certainly worthy of deeper study.

121. INCARNATION.

Christ took the nature of a creature, not only because the creature’s great love to him desired familiar communion with him, more familiar than his infinite distance would allow, but also because his great love to us caused him to desire familiar communion with us. So he came down to us, and united himself to our nature.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 285.

From the video description: “Scott Anderson, the Director for Networking and Partnerships at Desiring God, talks about the life and death of Jonathan Edwards at Princeton Cemetery.”

Here, Edwards wrestles with the question of whether regeneration (or a disposition of the will toward the things of the Gospel) comes before the act of faith.

27b. CONVERSION.

‘Tis most certain, both from Scripture and reason, that there must be a reception of Christ with the faculties of the soul in order to salvation by him, and that in this reception there is a believing of what we are taught in the gospel concerning him and salvation by him, and that it must be a consent of the will or an agreeableness between the disposition of the soul and those doctrines; so that the disposition is all that can be said to be absolutely necessary. The act cannot be proved to be absolutely necessary; that is, it can’t be proved that there is not the disposition before there is an act because it is said by some that [the fact that] a man can’t be saved before he has actually believed, if he is come to years of discretion, is plain by Scripture. But I say, no plainer than that a man must actually live a holy life before he can be saved; for the Scripture in many places speak as plainly about the necessity of a holy life as of believing. But by those expressions concerning a holy life, we can understand nothing else but a disposition that would naturally exert itself in holy [living] upon occasion; so we say of the believing disposition.

And as sometimes a person has this disposition within ‘em who have in times past felt the quickest: exercises of it, yet may not sensibly feel them for some time; so a man may have the disposition in him for some time before he ever sensibly feels them, for want of occasion and other reasons. ‘Tis the disposition and principle is the thing God looks at. Supposing a man dies suddenly and not in the actual exercise of faith, ’tis his disposition that saves him; for if it were possible that the disposition was destroyed, the man would be damned and all the former acts of faith would signify nothing.

Those particular acts our divines describe may possibly be necessary thus, that it is impossible for such a disposition to be in the mind, in such circumstances, without its being exercised in such particular kind of actions; which must be determined by plain consequence of nature or else by Scripture. The Scripture indeed, in many invitations to Christ, doth make use of the words “come,” “believe,” “trust,” “receive,” which without doubt signify those actions that are aptly represented by these expressions. It need not be doubted but that many of the ancient Jews before Christ were saved without the sensible exertions of those acts in that manner which is represented as necessary by some divines, because they had not those occasions nor were under circumstances that would draw them out; though without doubt they had the disposition, which alone is absolutely necessary now, and at all times and in all circumstances is equally necessary.

This is furthermore certain and evident concerning conversion, or a true reception of Christ, if it be actual: there must be a dying unto sin and an emptying of self that Christ may be all in all, what in the Scripture is called “hating our own life.”

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 213-215.

This entry follows closely with a passage in Edwards’s essay “On Being.”

27a. GOD

is a necessary being, because it’s a contradiction to suppose him not to be. No being is a necessary being but he whose nonentity is a contradiction. We have shown that absolute nothing is the essence of all contradictions; but being includes in it all that we call God, who is, and there is none else besides him.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 213.

130. PELAGIANISM.

That there should be an immediate operation of God’s Spirit upon the hearts of the godly, to beget and exercise grace, seems much the most reasonable to me. For seeing man is made for such an end that his business is wholly with God, seeing he is made for nothing but to pay respects to and receive from God, it seems very incongruous to me, that the world should be left altogether without immediate communications from God.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 292-293.

Westminster Bookstore has the Banner of Truth edition of Edwards’s Charity and Its Fruits on clearance for $9.50 (50% off). This is a great price on a wonderful work.

Charity and Its Fruits is a sermon series on 1 Corinthians 13, and is one of the few series that Edwards preached during his career. The final installment in the fifteen-sermon series is one of the most remarkable sermons that Edwards preached. “Heaven is a World of Love” is described by Paul Ramsey, editor of volume eight in the Yale Works of Jonathan Edwards series, in this way: “[It is] Edwards’ remarkable glorification of divine love in every respect: perfect love for one another in indefectible love to God…The rhetorical power of this last sermon is rivaled only by his other ‘virtuoso performance,’ ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’”

Because this title is on clearance, there are only so many copies available, so act quickly!

a rare, fascinating glimpse into Edwards’s thoughts on music.

188. HEAVEN.

The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other, is by music. When I would form in my mind an idea of a society in the highest degree happy, I think of them as expressing their love, their joy, and the inward concord and harmony and spiritual beauty of their souls by sweetly singing to each other. But if in heaven minds will have an immediate view of one another’s dispositions without any such intermediate expression, how much sweeter will it [be]. But to me ’tis probable that the glorified saints, after they have again received their bodies, will have ways of expressing the concord of their minds by some other emanations than sounds, of which we cannot conceive, that will be vastly more proportionate, harmonious and delightful than the nature of sounds is capable of; and the music they will make will be in a medium capable of modulations in an infinitely more nice, exact and fine proportion than our gross air, and with organs as much more adapted to such proportions.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 331.

793. JUSTIFICATION. REWARDS.
Believers may be heirs of eternal life prior to their good works. They may have a right by Christ’s righteousness received by faith that may be prior to any regard to anything in them as a good work, or any virtue or lovely qualification in them; and yet [it] may be the pleasure of God to bestow heaven upon them in that way, viz. in reward for their good works, as lovely to God in Christ. And this contains no more absurdity or inconsistency than Christ himself, his being the heir of the kingdom of the world as a Son prior to his good works, and its being yet the pleasure of God that he should have the possession of the kingdom given him in reward for his labors. He was the Son of God, and so the heir of the world, and that was the reason that God appointed him to those labors, that he might obtain the possession of it in that way. So believers being heirs as children (which they are by the righteousness of Christ), is the reason that God appoints them to obtain heaven in a way of good works, which God hath before ordained that they should walk in them.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 18, The “Miscellanies:” 501-832, ed. Ava Chamberlain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 495.