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Trinity | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed thinking. I am so glad you are here with
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us today. We are attempting something that
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feels a little bit like trying to stare directly at the sun
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without blinking. We are tackling the single most
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difficult doctrine in the Christian faith.
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We are talking about the Trinity.
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Now I know what you might be thinking.
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Usually when we get to this topic the advice is to well to
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stop thinking people quote the catechism.
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God is one in essence 3IN persons.
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And then they basically say don't ask too many questions or
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you'll accidentally become a heretic.
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It's the standard approach. Yes, we call it a mystery, which
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it is, but, but, but often we use the word mystery as an
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excuse to, you know, switch off our brains.
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But in the Reformed tradition, we have always held that while
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we cannot fully comprehend God, we are absolutely supposed to
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apprehend him. We're supposed to use our minds
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to grasp what he has revealed. And that is why I am so excited
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about the guide we have for this deep dive.
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We are looking at Jonathan Edwards.
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And before anyone rolls their eyes and thinks we are about to
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spend 40 minutes talking about spiders dangling over fire pits,
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let me just stop you. That is the Edwards from high
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school literature class. Is a very, very narrow slice of
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the man, that's for sure. A caricature, really.
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The Edwards we're consulting today is the philosopher, the
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man who is obsessed with beauty, with logic, and and with the
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rationality of God. We are looking at his
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unpublished essay on the Trinity, and the goal here is,
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well, it's pretty ambitious. Edwards thinks that if you
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really understand the structure of a perfect mind, you can
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actually deduce that God must be a Trinity.
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That is the claim. It's a bold 1.
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He wants to show that the Trinity isn't just a random fact
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we have to accept. He believes that for God to be
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God, specifically for God to be infinite, happy and perfect, he
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has to be triune. Edwards is engaging in what
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Anselm called faith seeking understanding.
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He's taking what Scripture says and showing that it makes
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perfect logical sense. So we aren't just going to list
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Bible verses today, we are going to try to trace the architecture
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of God's own existence. We are going to try.
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Let's start where Edward starts. He doesn't begin with in the
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beginning. He begins with an emotion.
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He begins with happiness. He's a wonderful place to start,
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isn't it? His opening premise is that God
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is infinitely happy, and I don't think many Christians would
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dispute that. God is not frustrated, He is not
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anxious. He is perfectly blessed in
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himself. OK, I'm on board with a happy
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God, But Edwards asks a follow up question that I hadn't really
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considered before. What is he happy about?
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Right, that's the question. Happiness requires an object you
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are happy about a good meal or seeing a friend or finishing a
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project. But before the universe existed.
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You know, before there were angels or stars or humans, God
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was alone. So if he was happy, then what
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was the object of his happiness? Well, logic would dictate he has
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to be happy about himself. I mean, he's the only thing
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there. Precisely, Edwards argues that
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God is the only object worthy of infinite enjoyment.
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So God's happiness consists of beholding himself, understanding
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himself, and delighting in his own perfection.
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So God is contemplating his own glory.
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That seems simple enough. It sounds simple, but this is
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where Edward starts to build the argument.
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This is the first step towards seeing the three persons.
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He calls it the theology of reflection.
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You see, for God to enjoy himself, he has to know himself.
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He has to have an idea of himself in his mind.
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OK, this is where he uses that psychological analogy, right?
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He asked us to look at how our own minds work.
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Yes. He says look at yourself.
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When you think about yourself, you create an idea of you.
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In your mind, you have a mental image.
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But Edwards points out something crucial here.
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Your idea of yourself is weak. Weak in what way?
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Well, just just close your eyes for a second.
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Picture yourself. You have a vague image of your
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face. You might know you're sitting in
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a chair. You might know you're hungry,
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but does that mental image capture everything?
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Does it capture every firing synapse?
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Every pumping vein? Every single memory you have
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ever had. No, definitely not.
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It's just the sketch. It's blurry and incomplete.
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Edwards calls it a shadow. It is defective.
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It is fleeting. I mean, if you get distracted,
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that idea vanishes. And most importantly, that idea
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is not alive. Your mental picture of yourself
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doesn't have a heartbeat. It doesn't have its own
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substance. Right, my thought of me is not
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actually me, it's just a ghost in my head.
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But now, and this is the big leap, apply this to God.
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God is not like us. God is infinite, His intellect
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is perfect, His energy is boundless.
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So when God looks at himself, when he forms an idea of
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himself, it cannot be a shadow. Because there is no imperfection
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in God, nothing is fleeting or weak, correct?
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So God's idea of himself must be absolutely perfect.
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He has to capture everything about his essence and must
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capture his power, his eternity, His Holiness.
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Edwards argues that God's self knowledge is so complete, so so
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substantial, that the idea actually possesses the same
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nature as the thinker. So wait, you are saying that
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because God's thought is so powerful, the thought becomes a
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real thing, It becomes alive? In a manner of speaking, yes,
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the idea becomes a distinct subsistence.
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He puts it this way. If a human could have a perfect
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idea of his own mind, capturing every order, degree, and
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circumstance, that idea would essentially be a duplicate of
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the man. The man would be twice at once.
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But we can't do that. God can't.
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So God reflects on himself, and that reflection is so perfect it
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stands forth as a person. And that person is the sun.
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That is the Sun. This is why we call him the Word
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or the Logos. He is the internal thought of
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the Father expressed perfectly. This is the image of the
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invisible God Paul talks about in Colossians 1.15.
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This actually helps explain the word begotten.
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I have always struggled with that word.
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It sounds like being born biologically, which has all
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sorts of heretical problems. But Edwards is saying the Son is
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begotten by the mind of the Father.
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Yes, it is an intellectual generation, not a physical one.
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It's eternal. The Father eternally looks at
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Himself, and the Son is the eternal result of that look.
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Edwards points to Hebrews 1.3 where Christ is called the
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express image of His person. That word express means stamped
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like a seal and wax. The Sun is the perfect
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substantial stamp of the Father's nature.
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He also brings up a really interesting point about the face
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of God. I had never connected this
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before. It is a beautiful connection.
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In Exodus 33, Moses asks to see God's glory.
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He wants to see God. And God says My presence shall
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go with thee. Edwards notes that the Hebrew
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word for presence there is actually Panem, which means
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face. So the Son is the face of God.
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Think about what a face is. It is how you recognize someone.
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It is the objective reflection of a person.
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When you look in the mirror, you see your face.
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The Son is the objective reflection of the Father's
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glory. He is God's face.
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This is why Jesus can say to Philip in the Gospels, he that
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has seen me has seen the Father. You were looking at the perfect
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idea of the Father made visible. And Edwards ties this into the
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wisdom literature too, doesn't he?
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Proverbs 8 and all that. He does, yeah.
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In Proverbs 8, wisdom is personified.
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Wisdom speaks. Wisdom says I was set up from
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everlasting. I was daily his delight.
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Edward says this fits the model perfectly.
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If the Son is God's knowledge of himself, and the Son is the
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divine wisdom, he is the Father's delight.
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OK, so we have the first two persons.
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We have the Father, who is the deity in direct existence, the
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fountain, and we have the Son, who is the deity generated by
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the Father's perfect understanding of himself.
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That gets us to two, but getting to three always seems like the
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harder part of the equation for people.
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It is often the peace people struggle with most, I think,
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because we don't have a good analogy for it in our own
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experience. But Edwards argues that if you
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follow the logic of a perfect mind, the third person is just
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as necessary as the second. This moves us from the theology
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of reflection to what he calls the theology of love.
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OK, walk us through this. We have the Father and the Son.
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What generates the Spirit? We'll go back to our starting
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point. God is happy, He is enjoying
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himself. So you have the Father looking
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at his perfect image, the Son, and you have the Son looking
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back at the Father, the source of his being.
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What is the reaction between them?
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Delight. Love.
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I mean if they are both perfect, they have to love each other
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infinitely. Precisely.
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The Father sees his own beauty in the sun and loves it.
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The sun sees the source of all beauty in the Father and loves
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it. There is a flow of infinite holy
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energy between them. Edward says the God had acts or
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breathes forth in pure joy. But here is where I get stuck.
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We have love. I have love for my wife, but my
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love isn't a person. My love is just an emotion, a
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feeling. Why does Edwards think this love
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becomes a he? That is the crucial question,
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and the answer is the same as before.
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Remember the rule we established.
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God is infinite. Nothing in God can be a shadow
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or merely A fleeting feeling. God's love is not like our love.
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It is not a chemical reaction that comes and goes.
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God's love is a substance. It is a powerful existing
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reality. So just as God's idea was
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substantial enough to be a person, God's act of loving is
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substantial enough to be a person.
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Yes, this is the third person. The Holy Spirit is the deity in
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act, specifically the act of will and affection.
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He is the bond of love that stands between the Father and
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the Son. That does make sense of the name
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Spirit, right? Pneuma breath, breathe out.
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It fits the biblical metaphors perfectly.
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Edwards makes a big list of the symbols used for the spirit.
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Wind, fire, water, oil, breath, a spring, a river.
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I noticed that list, he points out.
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They're all things that flow, things that are active.
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Right. You don't pour out an idea, you
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don't breathe forth a concept, but you do pour out your heart.
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You do breathe out affection. You flow with love.
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Edwards argues that Scripture consistently uses metaphors for
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the Spirit that aligned with the nature of the will and
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affection, not the intellect. He also uses a very specific
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textual argument from first John Four.
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I want to make sure we get this right because it seemed like a
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lynchpin for him. It is.
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It's central to His case for the Spirit.
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First John 4.8 is the famous verse God is love.
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Now we usually take that as a description.
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God is loving, but Edwards takes it as a definition of the third
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person. He says the Holy Spirit is that
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love, and he proves it by comparing verse 12 and verse 13.
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Breakdown those verses for us. What's the connection he's
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making? OK so in verse 12 John writes if
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we love one another, God dwells in us.
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Then in verse 13 he explains how we know God dwells in us.
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He says Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and He and us,
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because he has given us of his Spirit.
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So having God dwell in US is the same thing as having the Spirit
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given to. Us.
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Exactly. Edwards argues the terms are
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synonymous. To have God's love in you is to
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have God's Spirit in you. Therefore, the Spirit is the
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love. He is God's love personified.
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This brings up the dove imagery too.
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I love this part of the essay. Why a dove?
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It always seems so random. It is not random at all.
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It isn't just because doves are white or pretty.
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In the ancient world, and specifically in the Song of
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Solomon, the dove was the emblem of the lover.
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The lover calls his beloved. My love, my dove, my undefiled.
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So at Jesus baptism when the Spirit descends as a dove.
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It is the visible manifestation of the Father's love for the
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Son. The Father speaks from heaven.
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This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, and
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simultaneously the Spirit rests on him.
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The Spirit is the pleasure of the Father.
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Resting on the Son is the Trinity acting in history
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exactly as they exist in eternity.
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I have to play the skeptic for a second though.
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I can hear someone listening to this and thinking, OK this
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sounds beautiful, but it also sounds like you are chopping God
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into parts, you know? If the sun is understanding and
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the spirit is love, does that mean the spirit is stupid?
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Does it mean the sun is cold and unloving?
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That is a very dangerous trap and a common misunderstanding.
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Edward sees it coming. He's very careful to maintain
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the unity of God. He uses the doctrine of
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pericoresis or mutual indwelling.
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Mutual indwelling untack that it's a big theological word, it
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just. Means they are a distinct
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persons, but they are in one another.
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They coin. Here Edwards explains it like
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this. The Father understands, yes, but
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how? He understands?
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Because the Son who is the divine understanding is in him.
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And the father loves. The Father loves because the
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Holy Spirit who is the Divine Love is in Him, and the Spirit
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knows because the sun is in the Spirit.
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You cannot separate them. It's not like 3 guys standing in
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a room. It is one divine essence
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subsisting in three modes of relation.
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So they are equal in who they are in their essence, but
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distinct and how they relate to each other, right?
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Edwards talks about distinct honors.
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The Father's honor is being the source, the fountain.
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The son's honor is being the wisdom.
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The Spirit's honor is being the virtue, the beauty the joy
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itself. No one is lesser, they just have
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different roles in the internal life of God.
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And those internal roles, they spill out into how they save us.
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This is Section 4 in our notes, The economy of redemption.
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And honestly, this is the part that hit me the hardest.
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It is where the theology becomes incredibly practical.
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It's where it all comes home for us.
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Edwards argues that the way God saves us mirrors the way God
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exists. So the Father appoints the
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salvation. He is the judge, the author of
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the plan. The Son executes the salvation.
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He is the Redeemer, the price. But then Edwards says something
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about the Spirit. That just stopped me in my
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tracks. He says the Holy Spirit is the
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thing purchased. It is a shocking phrase, isn't
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it? We usually think Christ
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purchased forgiveness or heaven or justification.
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All good things. Right.
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I think of the cross is paying off a debt so I don't go to
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jail, which is true, but. And that is true, but that is
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the negative side that is removing the penalty.
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Edwards is asking what is the positive gift?
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What did Christ die to actually get for us?
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And his answer is, he died to get us the Holy Spirit.
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Why is that the ultimate gift? Why is that the prize?
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Because of what we just established, if the Spirit is
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the love and joy of God, then giving us the Spirit means
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giving us a share in God's own happiness.
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Edwards points to Galatians 3. Paul says Christ has made a
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curse for us that we might receive the promise of the
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Spirit. The goal of the cross was not
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just to get us out of hell, but to plug us into the Trinity.
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So salvation isn't just being acquitted, it is being swept up
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into the love that flows between the Father and the Son.
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That is it. Communion with God consists of
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partaking in the Holy Ghost. Edwards loves the phrase from
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Psalm 36, the river of God's pleasures.
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He says that river is the Holy Spirit.
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When we are saved, we get to drink from that river.
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There is a really neat parallel in the gospels that Edwards uses
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to back this up. He compares Matthew and Luke.
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Yes, this is a brilliant bit of detective work.
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It's one of those things you read and think, how did I never
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see that before? In Matthew 711, Jesus says, if
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you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your
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children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good
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things to them that ask him? OK, good things.
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Got it. But then look at the parallel
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passage in Luke 1113. Nary Jesus says the exact same
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sentence, but he changes the end.
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He says, How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy
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Spirit to them that ask him? So in Jesus mind, good things
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and the Holy Spirit are synonymous.
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They are interchangeable. The sum of all good, the sum of
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all happiness, is the spirit. This fits perfectly with
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Edward's thesis. If the Spirit is the
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personification of God's own happiness, then receiving the
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Spirit is the greatest gift God can give.
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He is giving us himself. It really changes how you view
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the Christian life. It is not just rule keeping, it
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is inheriting a person. It boos the center of gravity
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from performance to participation, from duty to
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delight. Now, Edwards being Edwards, he
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doesn't just leave this in the abstract.
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He loves to look at the natural world and see these truths
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reflected there. He he believes the created world
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is a shadow of the spiritual world.
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He is a master of typology. He sees the Trinity everywhere.
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He talks about the human soul being a Trinity of mind, idea
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and disposition. But his favorite analogy, the
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one he spends pages on, is the sun.
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I want to spend a minute here because it is such a helpful
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visual. Walk us through the sun analogy,
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OK? Imagine you were standing
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outside on a bright day. You look up at the sun, Edward
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says. You can distinguish 3 things in
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that one phenomenon. OK, what is the?
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First, there is the substance of the sun, the actual burning ball
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of gas, the internal constitution that you cannot
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really see or touch directly. It just is.
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That represents the Father. He is the source.
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He's the founder of the deity. The substance is the father and
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the second. The second is the brightness,
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the shining disk, the glory that hits your eye and makes you
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squint. That represents the sun, just as
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the sun is the brightness of God's glory and the visible
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image of the invisible Father. The brightness is generated by
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the substance, just as the sun is eternally begotten of the
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Father. Makes sense and the Spirit?
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The spirit is the rays, the heat, the energy that radiates
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out from the sun to warm the earth, make plants grow and
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touch your skin. The Spirit is the action of the
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sun reaching out into the world. That is incredibly helpful.
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The substance, the brightness and the rays, they are all the
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sun. You can't have the sun without
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light, and you can't have the sun without heat.
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Exactly. And the rays proceed from the
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substance and the brightness, just as the spirit proceeds from
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the Father and the Son. It all holds together.
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He takes this even further with the rainbow, doesn't he?
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He does. He asks what happens when those
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sunbeams, which represent the spirit, hit a cloud or a prism?
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They break into colors. The spectrum Red, orange,
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yellow. The spectrum, Yeah, Edward says.
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The colors of the rainbow represent the various graces of
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the Spirit. Lovejoy, peace, patience,
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kindness. These aren't different things.
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They are the single white light of the Holy Spirit refracted
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into our human lives, showing His manifold beauty.
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And that connects back to the throne room visions in Ezekiel
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and Revelation where there is a rainbow around the throne it.
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Creates A consistent biblical picture.
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It shows that Edwards didn't just see trees and sky, he saw
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shadows of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit embedded in the
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physics of the universe. We have talked about the what
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and the how of the Trinity, but we need to land on the why.
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Why did this Triune God create the world in the 1st place?
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If he is so happy and self-sufficient, why bother with
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us? This is the teleological
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argument, the purpose of it all, and it is arguably the most
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beautiful part of Edward's thought.
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We go back to the beginning. God loves himself.
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That is his nature, because he loves himself.
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He loves his perfect image, the Son.
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So the Father loves the Son infinitely.
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That's the primary relationship. Right.
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And because he loves the son, he wants to delight the son.
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He wants to give the son a gift that is worthy of him.
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Edwards argues that the creation of the world is ultimately to
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provide a spouse for the sun. A spouse?
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You mean the church? The Church, all of the redeemed
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people in history, from every tribe and tongue and nation.
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The universe is essentially a stage built so that the sun
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could have a bride to love and who would love him back.
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So creation isn't an accident? Yeah, and it isn't just because
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God was lonely. God was never lonely.
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He had the eternal, perfect fellowship of the Trinity.
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But God's love is by nature expansive.
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It's overflowing. He creates to enlarge that
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circle of joy. He wants to bring creatures into
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the conversation of love that he's always enjoyed.
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That is staggering. The world exists to gratify the
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love in Christ's heart. It puts all of history into
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perspective. It means that everything,
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creation, the fall, redemption, judgement is all heading toward
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a wedding feast. As we wrap up this deep dive, I
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want to touch on Edward's humility here because we have
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been throwing around some heavy concepts.
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Infinite intellect, reflexive acts, eternal generation.
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It sounds very confident, but Edwards doesn't claim to have
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solved God, does he? Not at all.
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He is very clear about that. He explicitly says he hasn't
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explained away the mystery, and he's a fantastic analogy here.
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The microscope. I love this image.
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He says look at a bug or a leaf with your naked eye.
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It looks simple, smooth. But put it under a microscope.
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What do you see? You see veins, you see hairs,
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you see jagged edges and cells. It's way more complex.
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Right. You see detail, you see
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structure, you see a whole world you didn't know was there.
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Edward says that by using reason and Scripture, we are looking at
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the Trinity through a microscope.
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We see more clearly, yes, but we also see more complexity than we
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knew existed before. We have actually increased the
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number of visible mysteries. So the goal isn't to make God
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simple. The goal is to make our wonder
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specific. That is a great way to put it.
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We move from a vague confusion to a precise, awestruck wonder.
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I think that is the goal of all good theology.
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Amen. For the believer, the Trinity
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isn't a math problem to be solved.
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How can 1 equal 3? It is the structure of love.
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It tells us that at the center of the universe there is not a
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cold, static, solitary being. There is a Father loving a Son
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in the joy of the Spirit. And the Gospel is the invitation
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to step inside that circle. That is a beautiful place to
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land. But before we go, I want to
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leave our listeners with one final thought from the text I
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found really provocative. Edwards notes something peculiar
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about how the Bible speaks of the Spirit's love.
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Yes, this is a detail many miss is a very subtle point.
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Edwards points out that while the Bible often speaks of the
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Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Father, it never
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explicitly speaks the Holy Spirit living the Father or the
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Son. Which sounds wrong at first.
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I mean, of course the Spirit loves them, He is God.
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But Edward's logic holds. If the spirit is the love, he
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doesn't need to have love. He is the bond itself.
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He is the kiss between the Father and the Son.
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He is the personification of their joy.
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So when we pray for the Spirit, we aren't just asking for power
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or guidance, we are asking to be filled with the very love that
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God has for himself. We are asking for the joy of God
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to become our joy. And that leads to a question for
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you to think about this week. How does thinking of the Spirit,
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not as a separate actor but as the living personal joy of God,
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change how you pray for his presence?
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That is something worth meditating on.
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Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the mind of
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Jonathan Edwards. We will see you next time on
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Reformed Thinking.