Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 66:1 (Spring 2004)
Article: Dispositional Soteriology: Jonathan Edwards On Justification By Faith Alone
Author: George Hunsinger

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WTJ 66:1 (Spring 2004) p. 107

Dispositional Soteriology:
Jonathan Edwards On Justification By Faith Alone

George Hunsinger

[George Hunsinger is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.]

It is impossible to read Jonathan Edwards’s long 1734/1738 treatise on justification by faith alone without realizing that one is in the presence of a very great mind.1 The treatise is as rigorous in argument and subtle in its distinctions as any of his other writings. Since like many of his theological treatises it started out as a series of sermons, one stands in awe at how a congregation could have had the capacity of taking it in by ear. Even to track the argument in its general outlines would have required a level of personal and cultural achievement that puts our own “sound-bite” culture in the shade. At the same time, however, it seems fair to say that the virtues of Edwards’s treatise are also in some sense its liabilities. Are there not junctures where the argument seems to pass over from being rigorous to being merely pedantic, from being subtle to being excessively precise, and from being biblically adequate to being rationalistic at the expense of the subject matter?

As an example of commendable rigor, take the long middle section in which Edwards considers what Paul means by the term “law” (pp. 167-83). Addressing himself to a question that has again gained currency in recent New Testament scholarship, Edwards asks whether for Paul the law was primarily ceremonial, as some Arminians had alleged, or whether it was rather primarily moral, as the Reformation tradition had proposed. Edwards not only defends the Reformation, but he does so at a level of sophistication that would seem to remain unsurpassed. Although I am no expert on the current New Testament debate, I suspect that Edwards’s meticulous examination of the internal evidence would still hold up rather well. Those dissatisfied with the arguments of scholars like E. P. Sanders and James Dunn will find a welcome ally in Edwards, should they choose to consult him. If Edwards is any indication, one cannot help but feel that standards of evidence and argumentation were perhaps higher in the eighteenth century than they are in theology today.

An impressive but perhaps less successful example of sharp argumentation may be found in Edwards’s critique of the traditional distinction between Christ’s “passive” and “active” righteousness (pp. 193-99). Edwards proposes

WTJ 66:1 (Spring 2004) p. 108

to replace the distinction with a supposedly better one, namely, between “negative” and “positive” righteousness. The prob...

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