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Transcript - CH504 The Theology of Jonathan Edwards © 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved. 1 of 13 LESSON 16 of 24 CH504 The Doctrine of Christ, Part 2 The Theology of Jonathan Edwards John H. Gerstner, PhD, DD Experience: Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary This is lecture 16 on our series on the theology of Jonathan Edwards, the second and concluding one on the Mediator. Let us pray. O God our God, how we thank thee that we have an eternity to thank thee for the mediatorship of our Lord Jesus Christ; it’s only because of Him that we can call upon thee now. It’s only because He died for us that we live to thee and can call thee Abba, Father. Bless us as we continue gratefully to study the understanding of Edwards in these profound truths of Holy Scripture, especially the glorious redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we ask it. Amen. We concluded the first part of our exposition of Edwards’s exposition of the mediatorship of Jesus Christ by pointing out that he was conscious of the problem that Jesus had a sinless human nature even though it was taken from a human sinner, the virgin Mary. His argument, as I mentioned last time, is no postulation that Mary was immaculately conceived. It was not necessary. Mary was still a fallen sinner who had to be redeemed by the Lord to whom she gave birth. But the way by which that birth was kept from contaminating her holy Son was that, as Edwards says, It was formed by the Holy Ghost. Anything formed by the Holy Ghost must be a holy thing. Seeing it was the immedi- ate work of infinite omnipotent holiness itself, that thing wrought must needs be perfectly holy without any unholi- ness though wrought in the midst of pollution and brought out of it. It is in the proper work of this infinite divine holy energy to bring good out of evil, light out of darkness, life out of death, holiness out of impurity. Edwards goes on to explain Christ’s own perfect holiness to which we will devote a later section of this tape. This reflection leads Edwards to draw a corollary which expresses a persistent theme of his concerning sanctification, the subject of a later tape. “The

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Transcript - CH504 The Theology of Jonathan Edwards

© 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.

1 of 13

LESSON 16 of 24CH504

The Doctrine of Christ, Part 2

The Theology of Jonathan Edwards

John H. Gerstner, PhD, DD

Experience: Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

This is lecture 16 on our series on the theology of Jonathan Edwards, the second and concluding one on the Mediator. Let us pray. O God our God, how we thank thee that we have an eternity to thank thee for the mediatorship of our Lord Jesus Christ; it’s only because of Him that we can call upon thee now. It’s only because He died for us that we live to thee and can call thee Abba, Father. Bless us as we continue gratefully to study the understanding of Edwards in these profound truths of Holy Scripture, especially the glorious redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we ask it. Amen.

We concluded the first part of our exposition of Edwards’s exposition of the mediatorship of Jesus Christ by pointing out that he was conscious of the problem that Jesus had a sinless human nature even though it was taken from a human sinner, the virgin Mary. His argument, as I mentioned last time, is no postulation that Mary was immaculately conceived. It was not necessary. Mary was still a fallen sinner who had to be redeemed by the Lord to whom she gave birth. But the way by which that birth was kept from contaminating her holy Son was that, as Edwards says,

It was formed by the Holy Ghost. Anything formed by the Holy Ghost must be a holy thing. Seeing it was the immedi-ate work of infinite omnipotent holiness itself, that thing wrought must needs be perfectly holy without any unholi-ness though wrought in the midst of pollution and brought out of it. It is in the proper work of this infinite divine holy energy to bring good out of evil, light out of darkness, life out of death, holiness out of impurity.

Edwards goes on to explain Christ’s own perfect holiness to which we will devote a later section of this tape. This reflection leads Edwards to draw a corollary which expresses a persistent theme of his concerning sanctification, the subject of a later tape. “The

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creature,” he says, “is more or less holy according as it has more or less of the Holy Spirit dwelling in it. But Christ has so much of the Spirit and hath it in so high and excellent a manner as to render Him the same person with Him whose Spirit it is.” That last statement that Christ “has so much of the Spirit,” meaning the Holy Spirit, and “hath it in so high and excellent a manner as to render Him the same person with Him whose Spirit it is” suggests that for Edwards the hypostatic union is actually in the Spirit. Indeed he says in Miscellany 766, “The bond of this union is the Holy Spirit.” It follows a long proof of this doctrine, as it’s a very unusual way of saying it. But it isn’t really different in content from the way it is usually said, that is, the hypostatic union is based on the union of the human nature with the divine nature. But the divine nature you see of the incarnate Christ is the Holy Spirit, commenting on John 10:36, Edwards explains that “as man Christ is united to the Deity by being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” I remind you of course he’s very careful to indicate he’s speaking strictly about the humanity of Christ now.

We’ve already indicated there’s no question at all Christ is eternal, unbegotten, underived, and absolutely the nature of God; so any of this type of talk that you hear in Edwards now you can be sure has reference to His human nature. He becomes the Son of God by the manner of His incarnation, by sending the Spirit assuming His flesh into being and into the person of the divine Logos at the same time and by the same act, the Father sent Christ into the world or “incarnated” Him by an act of sanctification. Thus Edwards equates the sending and the incarnation. “It was not properly the making the flesh of Christ that was sending Christ into the world but making the word flesh. It was not merely giving being to the manhood of Christ but the communicating the divine personality from heaven to earth and giving being to Christ’s manhood that was sending Christ into the world.” Edwards finds confirmation for this view in John 3:33–34, this view, that is, that the Holy Spirit is the bond of union by which the human nature of Christ is united to the divine nature so as to be one person. I quote,

He that hath received His testimony has set to His seal that God is true, for He whom God has sent speaketh the words of God for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him which words may be thus paraphrased. He that hath received My testimony as true and sets to His seal that I speak true, He therein sets to His seal that God speaks for. In my speaking of it, God speaks it. There is an union be-

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tween this human nature that immediately speaks with God that the words in being my words are God’s words which union is the consequence of God’s communicating His Spirit without measure to My [Jesus’] human nature so as to render it the same Person with Him that is God.

I don’t remember in the history of Christological doctrine ever hearing as profound an explanation of the hypostatic union as you have just heard me read. Something more is doubtless intended than that he was an inspired person and spoke the Word of God as the prophets did when Christ says that he that receives His testimony, sets to His seal that God is true. Because His words were God’s words, He doubtless has respect to something that is peculiar to Himself. Edwards is conscious of the fact that Christ is a Prophet, Priest, and King and has certain resemblances to mere human beings who are prophets, priests, and kings.

But in all areas where he explores that similarity, he searches for and usually detects that which distinguishes the role as possessed by Jesus Christ. For example, Christ was a miracle worker. And we won’t have time in this series to indicate it, but Edwards has in some of his studies shown that though Moses was a miracle worker and so was Paul, Jesus’ doing miracles was done in such a way as only a divine being would do miracles. Here he’s trying to show His prophetic role is unique to Him as a divine God-Man. Something that is His own prerogative and, therefore, the reason that he gives for it is something peculiar to Him. And that is God’s giving the Spirit not by measure unto Him when He says that he that hears His words (Jesus’ words) hears God’s words. And . . . it is most natural to understand Him in a sense analogous to what He says elsewhere. “My Father worketh hitherto as I work, and he that hath seen Me has seen the Father.” Someone has counted three thousand times in which the Bible indicates that it’s the Word of God. But you see, what Edwards is saying here, when Christ speaks the Word of God it’s no more inerrant, infallible but there’s a divinity in it that the infallible, inerrant, mere human prophets did not possess.

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Edwards attempts to prove this doctrine also by citing the relationship of Christ to believers. He writes,

The incarnation of the Son of God and the union of the two natures of Christ as a union [on that subject] as the union of believers with Christ be by the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ in them, so it may be worthy to be consid-ered whether or no the union of the divine with the human nature of Christ be it by the Spirit of the Logos dwelling in him after a peculiar manner and without measure.

It follows a very long and important discussion of that theme which we don’t have time for here.

We cannot imagine Jonathan Edwards dealing with the subject of the incarnation and not facing the apologetic problem raised. Is God and man in one person not a contradiction in terms? Are we faced with a paradoxical theology here, being required to believe something which is not only incomprehensible but contradictory in its very nature? While it is indubitably mysterious in Edwards’s mind, he insists “that there is nothing impossible or absurd in the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ.” This is the way he justifies that statement that there is nothing impossible or absurd in the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ.

If God can join a body and a rational soul together which are of nature so heterogenous and opposite that they can-not of themselves act one upon another body and mind, may He not be able to join two spirits together which are of natures more similar even though one is infinite and the other finite, but in nature the same? And if so, He may for ought we know to the contrary join the soul or spirit of a man to Himself, to His divine self.

What Edwards is saying it’s essentially no more mysterious that God could join the infinite and the finite than He could join the material and the immaterial. It’s profoundly mysterious, but no one can say it’s a contradiction, an impossibility, and an absurdity. There’s a difference of degree but not of kind is what he’s arguing. He continues by observing that this notion of the incarnation has been widespread even in heathen religions so that it obviously is not an outrage against reason if even the primitives had some notion of the possibility of it, though of course they never

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knew the truths revealed only in Scripture. He notes too “that reason did not hinder Spinoza, Blount, and many other modern philosophers from asserting that God may have a body or rather that the universe or the matter of the universe is God.” This is an interesting point here. Spinoza, the Jew who fell away from Jewish orthodoxy and was excommunicated from the synagogue, was virtually a pantheist, materialistic at that, nevertheless could talk about God being extended materially, as it were.

And all Edwards was saying here he knows those people are heterodox. He’s not suggesting for a moment that they got some form of a doctrine of the incarnation. He’s simply saying that these philosophers who would be so hostile to orthodox Christianity are nevertheless entertaining a concept which is not dissimilar from the Christian doctrine of incarnation. Again he points out that “many nations believe the incarnation of Jupiter himself reason instead of being utterly averse to the notion of divine incarnation hath easily enough admitted that notion and suffered it to pass almost without contradiction among the most philosophical nations in the world” is the conclusion of that commentary on this matter. Here again you notice Edwards interested in the what we today would call comparative religion and the [empirics] of ideas analogous to Christian ideas. He doesn’t’ believe for a moment, as some in the history of religion schools have contended in the twentieth century, that Christianity was somehow or another derived from this. That would be an absurd idea.

But what Edwards does say is that certain supernaturalistic ideas in Christianity, that some philosophers try to maintain in the very concept is absurd appears constantly in the history of religion including some of their own philosophies. That shows one thing, that there is nothing basically absurd in that idea. Edwards would maintain of course that you have to have some reason for believing it. But he’s trying to say there’s no reason for saying it’s impossible to believe. And as you know and as we’ve indicated throughout, the reason to believe it for Jonathan Edwards is the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it. The Bible says it and that’s it. But he’s also taking time to show that those people who say that what the Bible settles is absurd is not at all absurd. The glory of God appearing in the face of Jesus Christ, that was the theme of the sermon on 2 Corinthians 4:6. [On] Song of Solomon 8:1 he preached that the incarnation of Jesus Christ was a thing greatly longed for by the church. The hypostatic union is the explanation of the unchangeableness of Christ’s human nature.

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Now we’re going to enter an area of great profundity and importance and an area which has been the source of incalculable heresies down through the history of the church. And we’ll see whether Edwards avoids those heresies and gives us a satisfactory explanation of a theme which on the surface of it raises suspicions immediately, the unchangeableness of Christ’s human nature. Human nature by definition is changeable. Only God is immutable. And immutability is an incommunicable attribute. People cannot be made unchangeable in that ultimate theological sense of the word. And yet Edwards is going to defend the proposition which is basically defended by orthodox Christianity but not always aware of, the theological problem involved of which Edwards is extremely sensitive. The hypostatic union, he says, that is, the union of the human nature and the divine, is the explanation of the unchangeableness of Christ’s human nature. “Christ in His human nature was not absolutely unchangeable.” There comes the orthodox Jonathan Edwards. “Though His human nature by reason of its union with the divine, was not liable to those changes to which it was liable as a mere creature. As for instance it was indestructible and imperishable” not by its own nature, he means, but by the fact of the union with the divine nature. Nothing in union with the imperishable divine nature could perish is what he is saying there. “Having the divine nature to uphold it, it was not liable to fall and commit sin.” Remember in our exposition of the fall of man, that was precisely the reason for the fall of man, that without God he wasn’t able to stand. Now here he’s not able not to stand. He’s not able to fall because having the divine nature to uphold it, it was not liable to fall and commit sin as Adam and the fallen angels did. “But yet,” continues Edwards, “the human nature of Christ when He was upon earth was subject to many changes,” subject to growing up and being hungry and tired and such things as that but not changeable in its sinlessness.

In a more detailed fashion, he discusses the relationship of the Logos (the Word), the second person of the Godhead, to the human nature in Miscellany 738 for those of you who want to read that. Offhand I can’t tell you whether that’s in print today or not. It will be printed when Schafer finishes his editing of all of the miscellanies in the Yale University Press edition. You’ll get a fuller description of it there. But you already see what he’s meaning by saying the unchangeable human nature of Jesus. As a created human nature, it is changeable. And it does indeed change in these peripheral matters. But because of its indissoluble union with the unchangeable divine nature, it cannot change. It cannot perish, and it cannot sin.

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What is the grand effect of the incarnation? That God can bring a measure of His own measureless blessedness to the sons of men. That’s the grand result of the incarnation. I repeat that God can bring a measure of His own measureless blessedness to the sons of men. God being infinitely happy, He cannot desire to communicate His happiness to him, the creature, which is nothing to the happiness God enjoys. But in the gospel, that is He can’t communicate the perfect happiness He possesses, the underived, independent unchangeable and so on, but of the same nature. In the gospel, God is come down to us. And the person of God may receive communications of happiness. The man Christ Jesus loves us so much that He is really happier for our delight and happiness in Him. This is Edwards’s answer to the full bucket problem.

Have you ever heard that expression, the full bucket problem? I suspect you seminarians have. Laymen will probably wonder, What in the world does a full bucket have to do with theological discourse? This is what it has to do. God is like a full bucket in the sense that He possesses everything. He is full to the brim with perfection. It is utterly inconceivable to add anything to Him. He is perfectly happy from all eternity. He cannot be made happier. He cannot be made wiser. He cannot be made more powerful. He cannot be made more holy. The question is, How can we who love Him and serve Him contribute anything to Him? How do you add anything to a full bucket? The usual answer is, you don’t. And the point is that God is blessing you when you bless Him.

I don’t know whether you ever read Somerset Maugham’s book Razor’s Edge. But you’ll remember if you did, that it begins with this boy, Larry, I think his name was, sitting in the corner of a room reading William James’s Principles of Psychology while all of his classmates are having a great deal of fun dancing and carousing around. He’s absorbed in the great questions of life. And as Maugham traces the story, he finds this young man in search of the ultimate asking a Christian in Europe about the God of Christianity who worries Larry because he’s represented as a person who creates all things for His own glory. As far as Larry is concerned, you remember, any human being who lives for his own praise is an egotist and quite despicable. And Larry couldn’t find the Christian notion of God jealously demanding His own glory as anything other than the picture of a cosmic egotist. And it led him away into the morasses of Eastern pantheism, as you will recall.

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The usual answer to Larry is that God demands His glory, not because He needs your adoration, which can’t add anything to His glory or His happiness. But He demands it for your sake. Because if you don’t worship Him, you’ll destroy yourself, and if you do worship Him, you’ll bless yourself. That’s the usual answer, and Edwards is not averse to that. But he also goes beyond it and tries to show through his doctrine of the Mediator that there is a way by which you can actually contribute to the Deity. That’s what he’s saying here. The Man Christ Jesus, the God-Man Christ Jesus, the God who has become man, loves us so much in His human nature that He’s really happier for our delight and happiness in Him. We contribute something to God who can’t receive anything through the Mediator who can receive and be blessed by our love and service because He is the God-Man.

As a human creature, He is able to receive what as a divine being he would not be at all capable of benefitting from. This is Edwards’s answer to the full bucket problem. Man makes God happier. I hope if any of you are interested in contemporary process theology, you’ll notice this comment. Charles Hartshorne is not satisfied that orthodoxy provides a role for men at this very point. And though I think Hartshorne should be satisfied on the basis of what’s been said before, he certainly would be satisfied if he could believe what Edwards was saying, that the incarnation makes God capable of being benefitted and blessed by the services of men.

The beholding, loving, and serving of God is not merely with the eyes of faith. “The saints do actually see a divine Person with bodily eyes in the same manner as we see one another.” Here again I don’t know what you think about Edwards, but one thing you can’t find the man dull. It doesn’t make any difference what particular doctrine he takes up, he’s that man who brings out treasures old and new. He rings the changes on classic orthodoxy. But he’s never satisfied merely to do that. He invariably brings something up that is almost unknown if not totally unknown apart from him. Here he’s proposing something which at first sounds like stark heresy, but as you listen and hear him out and so on it’s almost obvious. You start hitting yourself on the side of the head wondering where you’ve been all your life and how you could be so unperceiving. This incidentally is another thing that he brings out. I don’t know whether I mentioned that in an earlier lecture or not, but in quoting John Locke, he points out, “It’s one thing to see something when it’s pointed out.

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It’s another thing to see it in yourself.” God is spread all over His creation, but we can be awfully blind. But when someone points out, then we see very well.

Here Edwards is pointing out something that we can see. Let me read the statement again. I think it becomes perfectly self-evident, doesn’t it, as you read a simple statement like that even if you’ve never thought about it before. “The saints do actually see a divine Person with bodily eyes in the same manner as we see one another.” I’m looking at two men who are on the other side of this recording booth. I can see them there. All I see is two bodies, white shirts and ties and so on sitting there. That’s all. But I know those two men. And in a certain very real sense I see those persons who are not identified with a body which is visible to my eyes. I know there’re two human spirits over there, and I see them in that sense. And Edwards said that when you see Jesus Christ, you not only see a human spirit, you see a divine spirit. You’re looking at God, as it were. According to the sermon on Romans 2:10, this was one of the purposes of God in assuming a human body. “That the saints might see God with bodily eyes not only in the understanding [though that’s the ultimate beatific vision] but in all ways of seeing that the human nature is capable of.”

Now we come to a contemporary question of great importance. As a matter of fact, the kenosis doctrine developed most extensively in the nineteenth-century theological aberrations. But Edwards is conscious of the question to which the kenoticists gave what he would, and I do, consider wrong answers before that particular type of theology was developed. What was Edwards’s opinion of the kenosis doctrine? Kenosis refers to the Greek word kenao, which is a word used by Paul in Philippians 2 when it says that “He who existed in the form of God was equal with God and thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He emptied Himself, became of no reputation, took upon Himself the form of a man.” He emptied Himself, the word is kenao, and from that we get the kenosis doctrine. And the question is, Of what did the Son empty Himself when He became incarnate? Did Edwards suppose that Christ, by becoming a man, emptied Himself of deity, ceased to be God, or laid aside certain attributes of God, one or many as has been part of modern kenotic doctrine? From the absolute extreme of emptying Himself of deity to very moderate extremes, emptying Himself of this attribute or the other, did Edwards share the kenotic view?

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Apparently he had no such notion as that at all. It seems clear from what he has presented that Edwards eschewed any Nestorianism which would separate the human person from the divine and have Christ with two persons, a human and divine, but equally clear that he also resisted any tendency to have the human nature lose its human nature being displaced by divine characteristics. God glorified and Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever are sufficient evidence in Edwards’s preaching and his exposition of Philippians 2:7 that he holds the classic orthodox doctrine; that what the Son of God did when He emptied Himself was not to divest Himself of any aspect of deity but to add to Himself something which was infinitely below Him, namely, human nature. Here was that infinite stoop which we’ve heard mentioned before. In other words, the concept, even though literally translated the word kenao does mean “empty,” the concept in Philippians 2 is not divestiture but investiture, not divestiture of deity but investiture of humanity. And you can see why that would be called an emptying because it is so far, far, far, far inconceivably infinitely far below that one who existed in the form of God and was identical with God.

We’ve seen what the kenosis was not in Edwards’s thinking and a little bit of an intimation of what it is, but it’s a sermon on 2 Corinthians 8:9 where Edwards explains more particularly what this divestiture was that the Son of God emptied Himself. “He did as it were divest Himself of all that manifestation of the glory and appearance of the infinite Sovereign of the world,” that manifestation of power and greatness that He had, that manifestation of wisdom and perfect holiness. His glory was covered by a veil, as it were. We couldn’t see through it to what He was, not that it wasn’t there, not that it was laid aside, not that it was emptied out but that it became invisible, inscrutable, what Luther would call the hidden God. He’s God, but He’s hidden under a veil so that you don’t see Him; but He is He, God and nothing other than God the immutable, unchangeable. It seems to me that the whole concept of kenoticism is, sorry to say this because some of the people who’ve advocated it are highly able people, but it’s stupid. It’s a silly doctrine. It seems to me even to mention the fact that God who’s light could cease to be light. It’s absurd to think that He who was all-wise suddenly becomes ignorant. He who lives unchangeably changes. He who is altogether holy, incapable of being other than that could actually be subject to temptation and so on; that’s an absurd notion.

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You say this is Gerstner right now for a moment. But I’m following, as I say, the kind of defense of the Edwardsian orthodoxy here. You say if it’s so silly, why is it that such fine intellects have fallen into [it]? I think two explanations: one is the word kenao does mean “empty.” It’s a funny thing, and some very sophisticated and hypercritical biblical scholars can become absolutely utterly literalistic at certain points when they want to. The word [does] mean that in itself. But as I say, its meaning in this passage is quite other than that. The other thing is, the thing that really has driven some very fine, intelligences to some very absurd notions is that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the church became inundated with the notion that the Bible was fallible and erroneous, it had to face the fact that Christ, who taught the inerrant Word of God, must have been fallible and capable of error Himself. I think that’s really what created the kenotic doctrine. It provided a way to explain how Jesus Christ could goof and still be worshipped and still be called the Lord. He had laid aside certain of His divine prerogatives and could make the mistake of teaching that God’s Word can’t be broken, that every jot and tittle must be fulfilled, it is written as an infallible dictum. Jesus Christ taught it. And liberal German writer Jülicher says that Jesus was a fundamentalist as far as the Bible is concerned. That’s extremely embarrassing to any liberal who wants to try to call Jesus Lord and at the same time have to admit that His Lord was capable of a blunder of that magnitude. I’m not suggesting that these people who developed the kenotic doctrine acknowledge that that was their motivation. But you’re asking me how could people of such intelligence propose such a preposterously absurd idea, and that’s the only speculation I could come up with.

Christ not only divested Himself, Edwards continues, “of all show or outward manifestation or glorification of His deity, but He condescended to the feeblest form of humanity. While He retained the perfection of His deity, He assumed the vast imperfection of feeble humanity.” Probably nowhere is the kenotic question raised more acutely than with respect to Christ’s human knowledge. Edwards addresses what he himself calls this “grand objection” directly in terms of the classical text “Of that day and hour, knoweth no man, nor the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father.” The liberal question has always been in that connection, How could Jesus Christ be God? How could the incarnation be a verity? How could kenoticism be avoided and do justice to those words of the incarnate Jesus Christ, “Of that day and hour when He’s to come again knoweth no man, nor the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father.”

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Edwards’s explanation is that this obviously implies a reference to Christ’s human knowledge and not to His divine. Just as He cites another passage in which it’s said He couldn’t hide Himself would have to refer to Christ’s human capacity and not to His omnipotent power as deity. Of course Christ as God could hide Himself. Of course Christ as God knew when on the eschatological calendar He was going to return again. Edwards recognizes that Christ operated in two spheres. And one of those spheres was in human nature with its limitations. Thus He grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. Thus He accepted the testimony of Judas Iscariot, the son of perdition, as an apostle of His even though as God He would know from all eternity that He was making a reprobate an apostle of Jesus Christ. According to Edwards, the Son of God incarnate could not be ignorant. He clearly retained His divine knowledge. He only spoke with respect to His human nature, qua human nature, as the theologians would say.

Edwards writes, “It seems to me reasonable to suppose that that which the man, Jesus, had is divine knowledge by that He had His union with the divine Logos. For doubtless this union was some union of the faculties of His soul.” Listen to this very carefully, my friends, because here is Edwards always trying to do justice to every aspect of the Bible even when he walked perilously close to the abyss of profound heresy. Let me read that again.

It seems to me reasonable to suppose that that which the man, Jesus, had is divine knowledge [It’s a man who had di-vine knowledge] by that He had His union with the divine Logos. For doubtless this union was some union of the fac-ulties of the soul. But Christ had His divine knowledge by the Holy Ghost, Acts 1:2, “After that He, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the apostles.”

Edwards notes that when Christ asked His disciples a certain question, He did not need to be told what men really thought of Him. He simply wanted to teach His disciples a lesson. In other words, you see what Edwards is suggesting here that not only is Christ divine, not only does He possess infinite divine knowledge, but here he goes and moves very cautiously and slowly toward the Monophysite heresy but veers away from it just as he reaches the brink. The divine knowledge penetrated the human knowledge as well, but still Christ acted as a human being.

Page 13: The Theology of Jonathan Edwards LESSON 16 of 24 · We cannot imagine Jonathan Edwards dealing with the subject of the incarnation and not facing the apologetic problem raised. Is

Transcript - CH504 The Theology of Jonathan Edwards

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The Doctrine of Christ, Part 2Lesson 16 of 24

And He was just as dependent as the apostles would be upon the Holy Spirit for the communication of various teachings to the church of Jesus Christ.

Edwards treats Christ’s knowledge of the Father interestingly. The Man Jesus had a reminiscence or consciousness of His relation to the Father as eternal Logos. I wish I had more time for this. I’ll just have to throw it out as a suggestion for you to think more or read more about. But this much he does suggest here, that Jesus had as a man a reminiscence or consciousness of Jesus as the eternal Logos. He speaks of coming, teaching, and the like as agreed in heaven. “The man Christ Jesus,” writes Edwards, “was conscious to Himself of that heavenly teaching. Of course ’twas impossible that the Man Christ Jesus should remember this as it was in the deity.” But even somehow because of the interpenetration of the faculties He remembered even when He existed only as divine in the human nature. We’ll have to let that rest as a brief exposition of Edwards’s doctrine of the Mediator.