Evidence from cognitive-affective perception and love

The first line of evidence for assurance was of a personal and internal ‘soulish’ nature. It came from the convert's discernment of a combination of cognitive and affective change in the human mind and heart. Conversion as ‘new perception’ of divine beauty and harmony was cognitive,Footnote ⁴ but not merely so. Associated with and underlying it, were renewed affections. The diagnostic was the fact that the excellence of God was now perceived and loved by the convert, and that for its own sake. Conversion was, for Edwards, a harmonious union or correspondence between the objective reality of the beauty of God with the human, subjective appreciation of it.Footnote ⁵

Edwards insisted that the subjective reality of love in the heart of the convert needed to have both an upward and an outward orientation. His way of uniting love for God and love for people was to appeal to the union and participation of the believer with God, by infusion of the Spirit. Thus he states: ‘Christian love to both God and men is wrought in the heart by the same work of the Spirit. There are not two works of the Spirit of God, one to infuse a spirit of love to God and another a spirit of love to men.’Footnote ⁶ Both are the consequence of renewed affections, the fact that the ‘Spirit of God in the work of conversion renews the heart by giving it a divine temper’.Footnote ⁷ The basis for the role of the Spirit in this is his identity within the Trinity as the love of the Father for the Son into which the believer is brought by the Spirit's infusion.Footnote ⁸ Such an infusion must show in the new appreciation of divine beauty and the renewal of the affections of the human subject of conversion.

The presence of this new sense of things divine in the heart of the believer was diagnostic and it presents evidence of a contemplative or theocentric, as opposed to an introspective and anthropocentric, spirituality of conversion and Christian life. As Edwards observes, the ‘true saint’ is ‘too much captivated and engaged by what he views without himself, to stand at that time to view himself and his own attainments’. The triune God and his glory become her ‘ravishing object’ of contemplation and this and her consequent self-forgetfulness are a consequence of the derivation of true ‘gracious affections’ which have their origin outside of the self, in God and Jesus Christ.Footnote ⁹

Evidence from the immediate witness of the Spirit to the human spirit

The second line of evidence that a person had truly become a believer was also personal and internal, but it was of a more ‘spiritual’ than a ‘soulish’ nature, and it was of a more immediate nature than the first or the third. This was the ‘inner witness’ experience. It was both temporally immediate, in that its joyful effect was instantaneous, and also functionally immediate, in that it was the consequence of the direct and intimate speaking of the Spirit to the human spirit or conscience,Footnote ¹⁰ imparting to the saint the experience of being loved, and conveying the acceptance of sonship.

Edwards does at one point appear to consider this direct and immediate witness of the Spirit into the spirit of the saint as the highest level of assurance. It was an experience sovereignly imparted by the Spirit most often in seasons of revival of the church, and not to every believer, and not to any believer all the time. He addresses sceptics of this experience in the following manner:

This emphasis on the inscrutable nature of the inner witness of the Spirit is an instance where uncertainty begins to run ironically through the very midst of Edwards’ teaching on assurance of the love of God and salvation. The deterministic dimension of the highest level of assurance might well have left many of the saints, who did not experience this, wondering whether they were of the elect or not. Within the revivalist interpretation of Edwards, this was an experience willed by the Spirit sovereignly for some of the elect. If one was not one of the ‘elect within the elect’ chosen for this special operation of the Spirit, by which the love of the Father for the Son emanated to the believer in the Son, and then re-emanated back with the filial cry, Abba, resulting in the highest level of assurance, one might understandably live with a significant lack of assurance of one's authenticity as a Christian.

Evidence from affective-behavioural love confirmed in community

The third line of evidence was, for Edwards, the most telling, in that it was less subjective than the others. That, in his mature reflection, Edwards arrived at this as the highest level of assurance, and not the second, is evident from his speaking of ‘Christian practice’, and not the ‘inner witness’, as the ‘chief Sign to Others . . . to Ourselves’.Footnote ¹² Self-adjudged abilities to perceive and love the beauty of God and truth, and self-assessed experiences of the Spirit's witness, in that they were subjective, could be misleading. Edwards grew increasingly suspicious of claims to conversion or renewal based on religious experiences which were merely private and untested by the Christian community. Love as the acid test of the soul's state must therefore be one which was cognitively, affectively and especially conatively, verified. New perceptions and new lively affections must be verified by loving action. To assess the latter invoked a community component in assurance.

In his most mature reflections on the revival, therefore, Edwards advocates a testing of individual experiences in community in a manner that mirrored his trinitarian ideal of union but also of a sociality reflective of sociality in the Trinity. Love, consent and union were the chief marks of the Spirit within the Trinity, and they should thus characterise the saints. He writes, ‘I am far from saying, that it is not requisite that persons should give any sort of account of their experiences to their brethren’, suggesting that their sharing of their experience in community could assist ‘others in forming a judgement of their state’.Footnote ¹³ Professions of faith must be verified by commitment to experiencing the Christian life as one of union and communion with Christ, and his people.Footnote ¹⁴

Expectations for high certainty in Edwardsean assurance

Five interrelated factors in the general theology or specific soteriology of Jonathan Edwards might lead us to expect that he would reflect a high level of certainty with respect to the assurance of salvation for converts.

1. (i) The first is the evidence of a profound theocentricity in his whole theological endeavour, as evidenced by his well-attested concern for the glory of God as the end for which God created and redeemed the world. This aptly described God-intoxicated mindsetFootnote ¹⁶ would be expected to produce, for those under its influence, a correspondingly sweet assurance born of an absorption with, contemplation of and dependence on God for salvation, as opposed to one's inner state or works. As noted above, Edwards anticipated that such an assurance would be present in believers, derived from their new sense of divine beauty imparted by the Spirit in conversion and the subjugation of self-love by renewed affections for and contemplation of God.

2. (ii) Second, assurance would be inspired by the fact that, in Edwards’ approach, God achieves the salvation of humans within the ontic aim of his own self-glorification by a trinitarian mechanism. To level the charge of anthropo-centricity and individualism in the matter of assurance, as I will, at a theologian now well known for his trinitarian and doxological approach to divinity, may seem unfair. There is a key contemplative element within Edwardsean conversion theology. The convert is by the Spirit granted a ‘new perception’ of divine beauty and harmony.Footnote ¹⁷ However, it seems that this delightful contemplative and theocentric approach to assurance in Edwards is always in tension with an introspective tenor which arises from the assessing of salvation on the basis of the affective and sanctificational state of the human subject of salvation. The grounding of assurance principally on the signs of faith effected by the Spirit within human experience can indeed degenerate into an individualistic and anthropocentric pursuit. Perpetual ambivalence results. Assurance becomes a holy grail never quite attained. That Edwards was trinitarian in his approach to theosis is not in question. However, it is the particular nature of the trinitarian model he employs to construct his pneumatological theosis which leads to an inward turn and, consequently, these challenges for assurance. An emphasis on the incarnational union of Christ with humanity, that is, a more fully trinitarian approach to union may have redressed this imbalance.

3. (iii) The levelling of the charge of anthropocentricity may also seem unfair in light of the elevation of the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit in the work of Jonathan Edwards on salvation, and in particular the pneumatic manner in which union with God is achieved in Edwards’ schema which might also be expected to effect assurance. It could be argued that Edwards is the theologian of the Spirit par excellence within the Reformed tradition. There is a stated concern within the Edwardsean theological task to bring ‘honour to the Spirit’ in the economy of salvation, an honour he believes to have been compromised by the tendency in Reformed thinking to limit the Spirit's role in salvation to mere application of the saving efficacy of the atoning life and death of Christ to the believer.Footnote ¹⁸ Edwards eloquently expresses the necessity to acknowledge the Spirit as in fact the Gift which that atonement of Christ has as its aim. Thus evidence of a trinitarian approach lies in Edwards’ specific understanding of the Spirit as the vinculum caritatis and as the agent to whom the work of conversion and sanctification is particularly attributed in the Trinity. The fact that the Spirit, who is the love or communion of the Trinity, is infused into the believer creates an intimate union of the believer with the triune God: ‘’tis in our partaking of the Holy Ghost that we have communion with the Father and Son and Christians: this is the common excellency and delight in which they all [are] united’.Footnote ¹⁹ Edwards’ psychological Trinity thus achieves a direct link between the salvation and union of humans with the immanent Trinity, within which the ‘Holy Spirit is the act of God between the Father and the Son, infinitely loving and delighting in each other’.Footnote ²⁰ The lively affections and loving actions he proposed as signs of regeneration could only be present as a consequence of the immediacy of the Spirit to the human soul as a consequence of the infusion of the Spirit into the soul to effect union with God. They were present as a consequence of the sheer grace of God enabling participation of the convert in the life and love of God by the Spirit.

   This use of the vinculum caritatis gives expression to that aim to honour the Spirit.Footnote ²¹ Paul Helm has maintained that Edwards’ modification is still ‘within the Westminster covenantal framework and not of it’,Footnote ²² and he acknowledges that Edwards’ pneumatology brings about two important gains: the immediacy of the gift of divine grace conveyed to the soul, and the fact that this experience of divine grace by the Spirit's regenerative indwelling, is unique or distinct in its identity. The immediacy of new life and joy arising from this Spirit union within the believer and between believers would be expected to inculcate strong assurance.Footnote ²³

4. (iv) Fourth, and related to this third factor, a positive expectation of attainable assurance might be expected within Edwards’ ordo salutis by his avoidance of the extreme preparationism often present in the theology of his Puritan forebears (Perkins’ Golden Chaine, for example).Footnote ²⁴ Questions as to whether Edwards consistently avoided preparationism, and what constitutes saving faith and truly evangelical repentance, will be addressed below.

5. (v) Fifth, Edwards did introduce a communal aspect to the assurance of the individual Christian. This ecclesial, communal element, external to the self, reflects the social analogy of the Trinity, in that it is analogous to the notion of harmony and excellence in the relations within the union of the Trinity. Excellence in God to whom one must attribute complex beauty, Edwards surmised, must therefore require harmony, but for there to be harmony there must be ‘consent’ and therefore a plurality of persons.Footnote ²⁵ Plantinga Pauw has suggested that the social emphasis in Edwards’ assurance theology is confirmation of her thesis that Edwards’ model of the Trinity is an eclectic synthesis of the psychological model with a social model, the latter of which she attributes to the influence of Richard of St Victor.Footnote ²⁶ RamseyFootnote ²⁷ and JinkinsFootnote ²⁸ have even suggested that Edwards was influenced by the Cappadocians. The evidence of the social analogy in Edwards’ Trinity is incontrovertible even if its source in Edwards’ thought is controversial.Footnote ²⁹ That this analogy influenced the communal aspect of Edwards’ doctrine of assurance is also fairly certain. It seems reasonable to see the social component in assurance as a consequence of the participation of the believer in a Trinity in which the Spirit, as love, is love shared between persons, that is the Father and the Son and then, secondly, with human persons. Assurance would be brought to individuals as they participated in the unity that was prevalent amongst the people of God in revival. This was depicted by Edwards as the beauty of spiritual consents, evidence of a trinitarian–union focus in Edwards’ spirituality. Edwards described the revived town as ‘full of the presence of God, full of love and joy as never before’.Footnote ³⁰ A key dimension in the social analogy of the economic Trinity in Edwards was the spousal image of Christ as ‘husband’ and the church as ‘bride’: ‘There was an eternal society or family in the Godhead, in the Trinity of persons, . . . it seems to be God's design to admit the church into the divine family as his Son's wife.’Footnote ³¹ Evidence of this union as manifested by these seasons of unity and harmony in the church in seasons of renewal would have contributed to the assurance of the constituent members of the Bride. A greater emphasis on this communal aspect of assurance may have mitigated the individualism which prevailed in the matter of assurance. In fact, the prevailing imagery is that of the reflective soul of the psychological analogy, rather than the interpersonal love of the social analogy. The influence of the social Trinity in Edwards’ assurance theology is ultimately peripheral, and the dominating influence, and the source of the difficulties (individualism, anthropocentrism, monism), that of the psychological analogy.

Despite all of the factors stated here, however, expectations of a high certainty level in Edwards’ theology of assurance are in fact disappointed. The factors contributing to this uncertainty are now developed. In each case it is the weighting Edwards gives to one aspect of a theological reality over against another which creates the tensions for assurance.

Expectations of surprising ambivalence in Edwardsean assurance

Human subjectivity over divine subjectivity/objectivity. Theocentric theologian though Edwards was, within his soteriology there did develop an incipient anthropocentrism. The foundational Edwardsean concern for the glorification of God in the redemption of creation is accomplished through the redemption of Christ's Bride, the church, in that the redemption and glorification of that Bride is a result of its union with the glorified Christ, who is God. However, although throughout his theological endeavour Edwards articulated the importance of the incarnation of Christ and his actions on behalf of the Bride, as a result of a special concern he expressed to honour the Spirit with equal glory in the economy of salvation,Footnote ³² his preoccupation is with the bringing of each believer in that Bride into union with God by the infusion of the Spirit. The participation of the human in God achieved by the Spirit's infusion receives greater emphasis than the participation of God in and for humanity in Christ. As a result, the matter of assurance becomes a matter of assessing the signs of the Spirit at work within the realm of human subjectivity.

The possibility of absolute certainty with regard to salvation may in fact be an unrealistic ideal and, indeed, a denial of the fiduciary nature of the Christian life. In an age of postmodern uncertainties Edwards’ views may in fact have appeal. But whatever level of certainty can be attained – and John's use of ‘know’ and Paul's portrayals of settled assurance (Phil. 1:6; 2 Tim. 1:12) seem to suggest that it can – will be attained less from self-examination (though some is necessary) and more from a contemplative looking away to the Christ who has by his incarnational union with humanity effected justification for humanity and creation. Whereas a theologian such as Karl Barth locates the salvific event not in human experience but objectively in the history of Jesus Christ, and thereby is adjudged by some to minimise the human faith, Edwards by his pneumatic concerns magnifies the issue of human faith, to the neglect, one senses, of the vicarious history of Jesus Christ, in his approach to assurance. Therein lies the source of his ironic anthropocentricity.

Individual over communal election. The concern for the supremacy of God in Edwards was also evident in how he viewed election. Edwards in fact spoke of an assurance-evoking experience he himself experienced as he came to see the beauty of the doctrine of predestination.Footnote ³³ Despite this, undeniably, Edwards’ staunch view of election and double predestination creates a second feature of his theology which undergirds the ambivalence in Edwardsean assurance by creating the poignancy for the question, ‘Am I among the elect?’ Barth's well-known radical christological renovation of this doctrine was motivated by his perceived concern that the classical Reformed doctrine of election with the arbitrariness of the deus absconditus could not provide assurance. A community of interest has been suggested between Edwards and Karl Barth with respect to election,Footnote ³⁴ and specifically supralapsarianism.Footnote ³⁵ There are some interesting points of comparison, especially with respect to the union of the people of God in Christ as Head of the body, in the pre-mundane counsels of God.Footnote ³⁶ However, it is my opinion that Edwards’ position as supralapsarian has no more than a nominal similarity to that of Barth. The form of supralapsarianism that Barth opts for is a fundamentally revised one.Footnote ³⁷ The crucial point with regard to assurance is that there is a significant difference with respect to the scope of election in these theologians. Edwards’ particularism is explicit in his exposition of the covenant of redemption. God covenanted to glorify himself by ‘the redemption of a certain number of fallen inhabitants of this globe of earth’.Footnote ³⁸ As Colin Gunton reminded us, ‘The doctrine of election, properly stated should serve the cause of a proper ecclesial self-confidence. One based not in individual assurance of future salvation, though that may be a proper part of it, but in a call to ecclesial faithfulness.’Footnote ³⁹ The christological and communal view of election more adequately provides that ecclesial self-confidence, and in Edwards it is not quite there. By contrast, Barth's recasting of election is evidence that he believed that the question of assurance should be subordinate to the primary question of the nature of the God who elects. His more communal view of the self brought into question even the subjective/objective dichotomy, in favour of a coalescing of assurance and eternal security in light of ‘real reality’, divine and christological reality. Mangina, in his consideration of the question of assurance in Barth, has noted that ‘Barth does not so much forbid it as subject it to a kind of therapy. The whole train of reflection that extends over the 800 or so pages of II/2 is intended to help us change the subject.’Footnote ⁴⁰ The subject in Edwards is not quite changed.

Pneumatic over incarnational theosis. Theologian of Spirit participation though he was, and the presence of theosis in the theology of a Western and Reformed theologian has been acknowledged to be a remarkable achievement, it is my contention that Edwards’ theology of assurance required a more robust emphasis on the incarnational, christological union of God with humanity, to avoid unnecessary ambivalence.

Even when the community is invoked to give outside input, therefore, the spirit of Edwards’ whole approach to assurance has received just criticism for the fact that its spirit is still one of self-examination. It remains somewhat self-orientated rather than being christocentric. Despite movements towards a spirituality that is shaped by a vision of divine beauty and harmony, Edwards fails to develop a fully trinitarian account of assurance in which converts remain introspective rather than contemplative. Its obsession with realised pneumatological experience keeps it subjective and human-focused. It lacks the balance provided, for example, by the Barthian christological emphasis and is focused on the redeemed human's experience of grace by the Spirit, rather than on the orientation of the personal grace of the triune God extended towards us in Christ as the Man made one with humanity by the incarnation, and who has made things right in the universe for us. Justification by faith and repentance alone takes priority in Edwards, over justification by Christ and grace alone, as in Calvin and Barth.Footnote ⁴¹ Edwards remains unable to shed the dominating influence of pneumatic theosis and this ultimately prevents his view of conversion and sanctification from being shaped fully by the Trinity and trinitarian relations.Footnote ⁴²

Psychological over social analogy of the Trinity (immanent over economic Trinity). Trinitarian theologian though Edwards undoubtedly was, tensions persisted within his theology and spirituality of assurance arising from the primary trinitarian model he employed within his theology of conversion. That Edwards employed both the social and the psychological analogies of the Trinity is not in question. However, the fact that the psychological analogy dominated the way in which he viewed participation of the saints in God gives rise to incipient individualism, introspectiveness and even monism.Footnote ⁴³

As Plantinga Pauw so aptly puts it, ‘Edwards’ philosophical Idealism exacerbated the prevalent theological anthropocentrism of his day.’Footnote ⁴⁴ Edwards finds himself trapped and unable to completely extricate himself from the ‘power of the psychological analogy’Footnote ⁴⁵ in which the Spirit is the love of God, and therefore from the monist accusation. Furthermore, she noted that when ‘Edwards’ portrayal of the Godhead loses its intratrinitarian sociality, there is a tendency to describe the Spirit's work of union between the elect and God in monistic rather than social categories’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Given that this is his primary model, the ‘Godded with God’ accusation is difficult to dislodge, despite his protestations.Footnote ⁴⁷

Even an alternatively nuanced understanding of the Western, Augustinian psychological model of the Trinity, grounded more in the economic Trinity than in philosophical speculations about the ontological Trinity, might have served Edwards better. Barth (along with Calvin), to whom McClymond refers as a partner with Edwards in Reformed advocacy of divinisation, offers such an alternative. The limitations of Barth's theology of the Trinity are well known,Footnote ⁴⁸ and notably he did not express the hypostatic freedom of the ‘persons’ in a way that his theological method might have anticipated. In this, as has often been noted, Barth is influenced by a German Idealism,Footnote ⁴⁹ specifically an Hegelian Idealism, an Idealism of a different kind to that of Edwards. However, Barth's dependence on the economic self-revelation of God in defining his hypostatic ontology was sufficient to avoid the accusation of modalism,Footnote ⁵⁰ and from within the Western tradition of the Trinity he was able to offer a less conflicted view of participation. Barth's epistemological source for understanding the Trinity was not the human soul, as with Augustine and Edwards. His method of reconciling the one with the three is not strictly an Idealist one, as McCormack has shown, in that it ‘does not understand the subjectivity of God as the ideal projection of human subjectivity’. Barth's is rather ‘a critically realistic doctrine of the Trinity which begins, in a posteriori fashion, with the fact of divine Self-revelation (and the witness to it of the primitive church) and asks, what must be true of God if God has done this?’Footnote ⁵¹ Barth was thus primarily informed by the christological revelation event and that of the sending of the Spirit. It will not be surprising then that he will look to the true humanity of Christ as definitive of humanity, and that he will envision the assurance of human destiny by virtue of its relatedness to Christ by his participation in humanity.

It seems to me that Barth, though he did not embrace the term ‘person’ and could not be conceived as a Cappadocian trinitarian,Footnote ⁵² nevertheless avoids any charge of monism and presents a theology of assurance in the person of Christ and as a consequence of his participation in humanity for humanity, in a manner that keeps divine (‘modes’) and human persons distinct. By the same token it might be argued that Barth's christological anthropology may blur the distinction between Christ and other humans, thus minimising the issue of human response by the Spirit. Whether this is in fact the case is a matter of some debate.Footnote ⁵³ Whilst it may be true that Barth's pneumatology may have been enriched by that of Edwards, in that the former tended to maintain that de-emphasis on the Spirit in Reformed theology which Edwards sought to address, a key Barthian insight is a crucial Edwardsean corrective. This move was to start with the Spirit's role as mediator of communion in the man Christ Jesus rather than with the saints. In other words, the appropriate order for the strands that make up the knot of trinitarian salvation is Trinity, incarnation, and then, and only on the basis of incarnation, the possibility of deification.Footnote ⁵⁴

The role of the Spirit in the incarnation of Christ as Edwards described it is similar to that expressed above.Footnote ⁵⁵ However, it is the link between the incarnation and pneumatic theosis which Edwards does not adequately emphasise in his conversion theology that leads to the overly subjective nature of the criteria for assurance. Thus the Edwardsean pneumatic theosis, alongside the emphasis of Barth on the incarnational, christological participation of God in humanity for humanity, may contribute together to a theology of assurance which has its source primarily in contemplation of who Christ is for humanity, but also the appropriate but not obsessive self-examination element related to the Spirit's work in the human convert.

Sanctification over justification . . . as justification. A consequence of Edwards’ pneumatically dominant doctrine of participation which brings ambiguity into the matter of assurance is his tendency to emphasise sanctification over justification and even to confound the two duplex gratia. Whereas it appears at times that Edwards is merely offering a polemic against cheap grace like Bonhoeffer,Footnote ⁵⁶ sometimes the line between justification and sanctification or between faith and works is crossed. Edwards desired to stress that ‘the first work’ of regeneration which the Spirit effected should continue in lifelong sanctification and he spoke of new birth as ‘not finished till the soul is fully restored, and till the corruption and death that came by Adam and the first birth is fully removed’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Thus, as Plantinga Pauw observes, in reaction to the crisis conversionism of George Whitefield, ‘his view of the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit tilted away from a conventionally Protestant emphasis on God's sovereign grace in saving sinners towards a typically Catholic stress on the abiding reality of salvation in human persons’ and that during his years at Northampton, with respect to the twin graces, his ‘concern for holy practice encouraged a blurring of the lines between the two’.Footnote ⁵⁸ At one point Edwards stated: ‘Even after conversion, the sentence of justification in a sense remains still to be passed, and the man remains still in a state of probation for heaven.’Footnote ⁵⁹ It is not surprising in light of this that Plantinga Pauw comments that in ‘his polemic against the enthusiasts’ overemphasis on the initial conversion of the heart, Edwards skated close to the edge of denying the once-for-all sufficiency of the gift of faith.’Footnote ⁶⁰

This move by Edwards in fact plays out into a pastoral approach in which sanctification by the Spirit is given a preponderance of attention over justification in Christ, as grounds for the assurance of the convert. This has provoked Morimoto, for example, to point to consonance between the Edwardsean and a Catholic view of the ordo salutis,Footnote ⁶¹ and irrespective of its rectitude or otherwise, this is ironic given Edwards’ above referenced theological ethos, background and aims. BombaroFootnote ⁶² has questioned the conclusions of Morimoto in this regard, but it should be noted that, on justification as a progressive ‘making righteous’ in a Catholic sense, McDermottFootnote ⁶³ and HunsingerFootnote ⁶⁴ have also questioned Edwards’ stance. Admitting that ‘Edwards’ understandings of justification and regeneration are exceedingly complex’, on the one hand, McDermott lauds Edwards in that he ‘did not follow the Protestant scholastic tendency to collapse all of soteriology into justification’, and for his following ‘the “Lombardian tradition” (of positing the radical contingency and dependence of the created virtues on God) far more consistently than most of his Reformed predecessors’. However, McDermott is persuaded that Edwards’ emphasis on disposition over faith, and the dispositional structure of his soteriology, ultimately led him to ‘undermine the Reformation contention that salvation is the justification of the ungodly’.Footnote ⁶⁵ McDermott even opines that Martin Luther's salvation by faith alone becomes for Edwards, salvation by faith primarily.

In summary, the question Edwards seems to pose for the inquiring soul, troubled about his salvation, has nothing to do with the worthiness and efficacy of the person and work of Christ. Rather it is this: ‘Does the person see enough evidence of the Spirit being at work in his soul, and in his relationships?’ That Edwards sought to be trinitarian in his approach is not in question. The source of the tensions in his theology of assurance lie within the trinitarian model Edwards adopted. It is specifically the psychological nature of that model that gives rise to the problem.

Conditionalism. A further factor causing ambivalence in Edwards’ understanding of assurance may be attributed to an observable change in Edwards in the wake of the Great Awakening with regard to conditionalism, which has been documented by Plantinga Pauw.Footnote ⁶⁶ In his earlier writing (1720s) he keeps the covenant of redemption in close association with the covenant of grace, and the covenant between the Father and the saints is only another expression of the eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son and, notably, the uniting of the two is based on the concept of the union of believers in Christ eternally. The only condition of the covenant of redemption, and therefore of the covenant of grace, is that of Christ's righteousness alone. Human faith has no place in this. Faith rather than being a prior condition for salvation is ‘the soul's active uniting with Christ, or is itself the very act of unition, on their part’.Footnote ⁶⁷ By contrast however, in light it seems of his concerns about nominalism after the Awakening and false professions within it, Edwards began to reflect a theology in which the covenants of grace and redemption were no longer in such close harmony. His preaching and writing lays greater emphasis on human response in the acceptance of Christ's offer of salvation flowing from the covenant of grace. The language of conditionalism Edwards eschewed in the 1720s, he now employs in Miscellanies, 1091: ‘the covenant of grace, if thereby we understand the covenant between Christ himself and his church or his members, is conditional as to us: the proper condition of it, which is a yielding to Christ's wooings and accepting his offers and closing with him as a Redeemer and spiritual Husband, is to be performed by us’.Footnote ⁶⁸

There is in fact evidence that Edwards’ definition of saving faith reflects conditionalism even before the Awakening. In his treatise ‘Justification by Faith Alone’ (1734/1738), as indicated above, it is evident that Edwards espoused a justification that rests on a double ground.Footnote ⁶⁹ Whilst on the one hand Edwards seems to be clear that justification is in Christ alone, he equivocates that there is a primary grounding in Christ and his righteousness that results in the actual though ‘virtual’ justification, but that there is a dependent and secondary ground which is the condition of faith in the convert which makes it ‘fitting’ that she should be justified. Edwards attempts to dispel the criticism he anticipates that this may appear to be ‘congruent merit’, but as Hunsinger aptly points out, ‘he did not know, apparently, that by defining faith as a meritorious virtue, regardless of how secondary and derivative, he had moved closer to Thomas than to the Reformation’.Footnote ⁷⁰

Legal over evangelical repentance. This opens the question anticipated above as to whether Edwards’ view of repentance is in fact ‘evangelical’. Controversy surrounds this. Jenson agrees that it is evangelical,Footnote ⁷¹ but Michael JinkinsFootnote ⁷² has seen Edwards’ whole orientation in repentance as an anthropocentric one, focused on the human self such that it is inward-looking (incurvatus in se), as opposed to the Lutheran excurvatus ex se. That the New Testament calls for some self-examination with respect to the reality of one's faith is beyond question. However, the rigours envisaged by Edwards seem to move to an extreme whereby the focus in repentance is moved from the subject as Christ and his mercy to the human self. Edwards’ understanding stands in contrast to the Barthian perspective, in which repentance follows an awareness of justification as a prior reality in Christ (CD IV/2, para. 66). Evangelical metanoia is not a condition for the gaining of forgiveness. It is a consequence of contemplation of the euangelion, that is, the good news of the righteousness of Christ ‘for us’. Looking for inner signs, including hunger for God and righteousness, and even behavioural signs are irrelevant on this account. Barth would have us look in another direction altogether, away from self to Christ standing in our place, holy on our behalf.