To speak honestly and graciously about a man’s sins it’s best to start by speaking about his theology. The church has a responsibility to call one another to repentance, to challenge one another, to instruct one another in the faith. Sometimes that means warning ourselves and others by speaking publicly about specific examples of fallenness. Jesus’ teaching Matthew 18 gives us an example of this happening, as does Paul’s instruction to the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 5). But before I begin to put my fingers on the specific failures of Jonathan Edwards I want to examine his harmatology, his understanding of sin.
The great theologian’s belief the deceptive nature and power of sin is exemplified in some very visible ways for students of his life. We will explore that in more detail next week. In this post I want to take a step back and examine his understanding of the Fall. How did sin come to be? What do we make of Adam’s nature prior to his sin? How does our understanding of the Fall affect our view of ourselves post-Fall? These are all important questions. Edwards attempts to answer these questions in his work The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended. This work is, however, very deeply flawed. It is easily one of the most controversial pieces of writing that Edwards ever produced, it continues to be the subject of much disdain today. There are many weaknesses in the treatise, but the primary problem with it is the author’s inability to recognize his own assumptions. Edwards is so consumed by the reality of the fall that he assumes it in articulating its origin.
In one sense this is a man who is very much aware of sin. He opens the work with a support for Original Sin drawn from the evidence of the sinful world around him. Sin is an ever-present reality among us; we see it, experience it, and commit it ourselves. He repeatedly overturns arguments against Original Sin by highlighting just how pervasive and inherent sinfulness is in humanity. He outright mocks the idea that man is innately good because he does some good things. To suggest that man is good because he does even mostly good is like saying a ship is seaworthy because it will get you almost all the way to your destination without sinking, or that a road is safe because it only has one spot in it where you will surely die. Regardless of the amount of sin a man commits, whatever little he sins is enough evidence to indicate his propensity towards sin, Edwards argues.
But where does this propensity to sin come from? It comes from Adam, our forefather. It is noted by many scholars that here Edwards makes a strange and false statement that all of humanity was direct involved in Adam’s sin. Edwards taught that man fully “consented” and “concurred” with Adam’s sin. This was more than just imputation, it was actual guilt. He maintained this position by some strange and confusion belief in “continued creation,” whereby man was continually created ex nihilo at every moment of existence. I won’t comment on all of this now except to say that it is not what I believe and most scholars readily recognize this as a creative and unique contribution by Edwards. But we must ask, as many have (including Edwards), why does Adam fall into this sin? After all, he was created “good,” how does a “good man” do bad? It is here that Edwards’ theological development becomes muddled by his experience. He assumes the Fall even as he seeks to explain its origin.
For Edwards, though Adam was created good, he was created with the certain necessity to commit sin. This is not a mere potential to sin, but rather an inescapable fatalism. It is not possible for man not to sin, according to Edwards. Sin, said Edwards, was the principle of self-love apart from God and this self-love leading to sin was built into man from the start. Sin was inevitable for Adam. God had created man with a “fixed prevailing principle of sin in his heart.” Particularly this plays out for Adam because his rational thought, which knew what God had commanded and knew that such a command was good for him, was overpowered by a will deceived into believing that sin was more pleasurable and better for him. This of course is the reality of what happens to fallen men, but one must wonder how Adam, in a state of moral goodness, was deceived into believing that sin was better than obedience? Doesn’t this already make Adam “fallen” prior to his actual fall? Such is how John Gerstner understands it, he writes:
This theory seems eminently reasonable to us now. We know now that what appeals to our appetites seems lovely or attractive to us and does determine us whether or not it be in accord with or against our rational judgment. “Rationalization” is our current word for attempts of the reason to justify the rationality of an action which was not taken on rational grounds as it should have been. Cynics such as David Hume and theologians such as John Calvin would both agree with Edwards that that, in fact, is the way we do now act. But alas we are now fallen. This is the psychology of fallen sinners not of unfallen saints. This is the way one would expect the depraved to behave but not man fresh from the hands of God. Jonathan Edwards seems to have explained the fall by assuming it. He is not dealing with Adam before but after the fall. But he does not see this. He has explained sin by assuming the sinner. He has cured a headache without realizing the decapitation. (The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2. 319-320)
Jonathan Edwards on Original Sin does not solve the difficulty in understanding the origin of sin in humanity at all, though he certainly thought he had. The truth is that this doctrine in particular is so difficult to wrestle with because we cannot imagine what it must have been like to be devoid of sin and in a world devoid of sin. Even as brilliant a mind as Edwards’ still can’t fathom this reality.
Edwards understood well the reality, pervasiveness, and innateness of sin. Even as we prepare to wrestle with the failures and sins of the great theologian we must recognize that he understood clearly how deceptive and encompassing sin was. He knows it about all humanity and he knows it about himself. The fact that he struggled with sin was not unknown to him; the fact that he was sometimes blind to specific sins would not be surprising to him either. He readily acknowledged just how extensive sin was. It was so extensive that even in going back to the beginning of the perfectly created world he could not escape thinking about it.
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