Matt O’Sullivan

Professor Don Westblade

Religion 319, Section 01

26 November 2013

Joy in Every Moment:

How Jonathan Edwards’ Metaphysics Harmonizes the Sovereignty of God with Human Action in His Doctrine of Sanctification

Few Christians view metaphysics as a treasure trove of joyous truths for their daily life. Indeed, most people tend to view metaphysics as an airy subject full of cloudy arguments that have little to do with everyday life, much less with evoking heartfelt joy in life. But that is just what Jonathan Edwards achieves with his metaphysics. By employing metaphysics to delineate the depth of his theological positions, Edwards can deepen the Christian’s thankfulness for and joy in the wondrous and intricate magnitude of God’s love. A fine example is Edwards’ doctrine of sanctification. Edwards adopts the position that the totality of sanctification—both the will and the work—is immediately caused by God within the Christian. Edwards’ doctrine is influenced by his occasionalism, which can be roughly defined as the philosophical position that God is the only true cause in the entire universe and that, as such, He causes all things in every moment at all times. At first glance, the influence of Edwards’ occasionalism might seem to reduce sanctification to an assembly line in which God adds holiness to a Christian piece by piece. That is, if God causes all things at all times, it seems like there is no room in sanctification for any genuine human action. But, through his fundamental metaphysical idea of habit as disposition, Edwards dispels the objection that his doctrine reduces Christians to passive objects on an assembly line. In this essay, I shall lead the reader through the way Edwards’ dispositional metaphysics makes possible an account of sanctification that harmonizes God’s absolute sovereignty with genuine human action. It is my hope that the depth Edwards’ metaphysics brings to his doctrine of sanctification shall become a vivid portrayal of God’s love and a rich source of joy to the reader.

The cornerstone of Edwards’ metaphysics is his definition of a habit as a disposition towards a certain action. In the “Miscellanies,” No. 241, Edwards defines a habit as “a law that God has fixed, that such actions upon such occasions should be exerted.”[1] Sang Hyun Lee traces the many ways Edwards’ idea of habit influences his thought. As Lee explains, the common feature of habits is that they “[function] like a formal and final cause” insofar as they “actively [bring] about events of a particular sort.”[2] For example, the production of carbon dioxide gas that results from mixing vinegar with baking soda occurs according to a habit, or law, that God has fixed regarding the relationship between the two reactants. The habit in this case is a formal cause insofar as it determines what type of action occurs—the production of carbon dioxide gas. It is a final cause insofar as it disposes the two reactants towards the reaction when they are combined. Furthermore, a habit is “not just an accidental or occasional sort of connection” but is “an active tendency” that God fixes so that upon a certain occasion a certain action always occurs.[3] That is, a habit is such that whenever the occasions for its corresponding action are met, that action shall be exerted necessarily. In the case of the vinegar and baking soda, the two reactants will produce carbon dioxide gas every time they are mixed together, not just some of the time.[4] In short, habits function as “active, causal power[s]” fixed by God that always produce specific actions upon specific occasions.[5]

Nevertheless, Edwards maintains that God is the cause of all things. Thus, God works according to and through habits as a means of His action. In this way, Edwards avoids the pitfalls of pantheism since, as McClymond and McDermott point out, “. . . it was not as though God had swallowed up the realm of creaturely causes and left nothing behind but God” to serve as the immediate cause of all things.[6] Rather, God acts according to and through habits that He Himself has fixed. God can still be said to be the cause of all things, since He fixes every habit in the first place, but He is not the immediate cause of all things. In this way, habits can be said to refer to God’s “regular ways of acting” that humans can observe and, in turn, refer to as “laws of nature.” God’s regular ways of acting range from the habit that governs the reaction that results from mixing vinegar with baking soda, to the habits by which He sustains the existence all things. Therefore, habits do not usurp God’s position as the sole and sovereign cause of all things, but rather it is God who fixes them in the first place and He who works through them as a means of His action.

In turn, Edwards employs his idea of habits as a means of God’s action within his ontology in order to demonstrate the radical dependency all things have on God for their being. In his outline of “Subjects to Be Handled in the Treatise on the Mind,” Edwards lists the arguments that “. . . laws . . . constitute all permanent being in created things,” and that “. . . the very being of created things depends on laws, or stated methods fixed by God, of events following one another.”[7] Edwards’ arguments indicate a shift away from a more static ontology in which the permanence of a thing’s being is based on independent, self-subsistent substances. As Lee notes, in a substance-based ontology—such as the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions—a habit is viewed as “an accidental quality that inheres in a substance.”[8] But, in Edwards’ more dynamic and dispositional ontology, habits “do not merely belong to entities but rather are constitutive of their being” in such a way that things “are habits and laws.”[9] That is, the permanence of a thing’s being is not rooted in a self-subsistent substance but results from the continuance of the habits according to which the thing receives its being from God. Edwards’ shift denies the possibility of arguing that things can exist independently of God—an argument he feared a more static, substance-based ontology might lead to—for two reasons. First, Edwards emphasizes that the habits upon which “the very being of created things depend[s]” are “fixed by God.” Thus, the habits by which things receive their being are not imposed upon God from outside Himself but are, in fact, established by Him in the first place. Second, as Lee argues, habits “are dependent upon God’s immediate exercise of his power for their application or exercise.”[10] In this way, continues Lee, “[the] permanence [of a thing’s being] is ontologically contingent” upon God’s continued exertion of His will and power. Put simply, habits are fixed by God and give things their being only so long as God continues to uphold them and works through them as the means by which He sustains the being of all things.

At this point, Edwards’ occasionalism arises front and center, for if all things receive their being from habits through which and according to which God continually acts, then God is the cause of all things at all times. But, before we apply Edwards’ idea of habit as disposition to his occasionalism, we must examine the way he assigns habits a sense of ontological permanence. This component of Edwards’ conception of habits shall prove fundamental in understanding the extent of his occasionalism. In “The Mind,” he argues that an individual’s habits are “really abiding in the mind when there are no acts or exercises of them” in the same way a chair exists in a room even when no one is there to perceive it. “For,” he continues, “when we say there are chairs in this room when none perceives it, we mean that minds would perceive chairs here according to the law of nature in such circumstances.”[11] In other words, the chair is perceived according to a habit God has fixed. The habit exists even when the circumstances for its exercise are not met—in this case even when there is no one to perceive the chair. In this way, as Morimoto explains with Edwards’ terms, habits “are ontologically present in reality, whether manifest or not, in the mode of ‘real possibility’ or ‘virtuality.’”[12] In other words, when not exercised, a habit exists in the mode of virtuality, which simply means it continues to exist even when not exercised. On the other hand, when a habit is exercised, it exists in the mode of actuality because it is then actively bringing about the actions towards which it is disposed. The important thing is that the habit has a sense of ontological permanence because it exists whether exercised or not. To return to the example of the chair, we can say the chair exists in the room even when not perceived because the habit by which it is perceived still exists virtually. The virtual existence of the habit means that if an individual were to come into the room he would, in fact, perceive the chair according to the habit, which would then exist, not virtually, but actually. Always existing either virtually or actually, habits have a sense of ontological permanence. That permanence is not independent of God—for He gives it in the first place—but it means God does not give habits existence only at the moment in which He works through them as a means to cause an action. Rather, He sustains their existence in the mode of virtuality even when they are not exercised. In this way, God gives habits a sense of ontological permanence.

Before assessing the way habits inform Edwards’ occasionalism, it must be noted that Oliver Crisp objects to Lee’s arguments about the ontological permanence of habits in Edwards’ thought. I shall, nonetheless, attempt to wade into this debate and provide a substantive and concise defense of Lee’s interpretation in order to lay a solid foundation for applying Edwards’ idea of habit to his occasionalism. Crisp argues that Lee errs in dubbing Edwards’ metaphysics a dispositional ontology. He insists that Edwards maintained a firmer and more traditional account of substance than Lee allows in his interpretation. For this reason, Crisp asserts that Edwards’ thought is more properly defined as “a version of essentialism, which, very roughly, is the doctrine that divides what exists into substances and their properties.”[13] Framing Edwards’ idealism within his own assertion of essentialism, Crips claims, “. . . none of the evidence Lee musters in favour of this dispositional account requires a dispositional ontology” but instead supports an “ontology where there are uncreated and, in a qualified sense, created substances (i.e. divine and human minds) that have attributes, and where material objects are really nothing more than ideas.”[14] Additionally, Crisp highlights some of Edwards’ most famous arguments for occasionalism in Original Sin—namely, the arguments that the way God sustains the created world is “altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing at each moment,” and that “if we consider matters strictly, there is no such thing as any identity or oneness in created objects, existing at different times, but what depends on God's sovereign constitution.”[15] By this, Crisp argues that Edwards thought “God creates the world, which momentarily ceases to exist, to be replaced by a facsimile that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appears to be motion and change across time.”[16] This process continues like a motion picture whose “images are a reel of photographic stills run together at speed to give the illusion of motion and action across time.”[17] In other words, all permanence, motion, and action, are illusory byproducts produced by God recreating the world at very moment in time. These positions together, argues Crisp, prove fatal to Lee’s argument that Edwards assigned habits a sense of ontological permanence. Indeed, if Crisp is right in arguing that God recreates all things ex nihilo at every moment—if the world is analogous to a motion picture—then nothing can be said to have any sense of ontological permanence.

Nevertheless, as argued by McClymond, Crisp’s objections do not account for the overall soteriological purpose in Edwards’ thought as a whole. McClymond claims that Edwards’ texts support Lee’s interpretation more firmly than Crisp’s interpretation on account of the way Lee “does justice to [Edwards’] soteriology and to his soteriologically-oriented doctrine of God and the Trinity.”[18] Crisp does, in fact, inadvertently note the relationship between Edwards’ dispositional account of habit and his soteriology when he points out that Edwards’ definition of habit in the “Miscellanies,” No. 241, occurs in the midst of some reflections on regeneration. Yet Crisp counts this as a strike against Lee’s interpretation since Edwards is talking about regeneration and does “not say anything that would imply that all attributes of a given entity possesses are dispositional.”[19] Nevertheless, if we read Edwards through the lens of McClymond’s argument—the argument that we need to read Edwards’ in light of the fundamental soteriological purpose driving his writings—the presence of Edwards’ definition of habit in his discussion of regeneration does not limit its application. Instead, it illustrates the way in which Edwards’ metaphysics flows out of and is built to support his soteriology. Moreover, if Crisp’s analysis of Edwards’ occasionalism is sound, any hope of harmonizing God’s sovereignty with genuine human action seems lost. As Crisp himself notes, a disposition can only be exercised if creatures can be said to have some type of persistent existence, such persistence being impossible if God does, in fact, create all things ex nihilo at every moment.[20] In other words, Crisp’s interpretation of Edwards’ occasionalism not only bars the harmonization of God’s sovereignty with genuine human action in the act of sanctification, but also does away with human action altogether. But, as I shall argue, Edwards’ soteriological writings on sanctification both demand and imply a harmonization between God’s sovereignty and genuine human action. We should, therefore, be wary of an interpretation of his occasionalism that bars any attempt to do so. Lee’s interpretation that habits have a sense of ontological permanence accords with the overall soteriological purpose of Edwards’ works for the very reason that it establishes the grounds for genuine human action. Thus, with Lee’s interpretation of Edwards’ idea of habit as our guide, we can now examine Edwards’ occasionalism in such a way that shall, in turn, allow us to trace its influence on his doctrine of sanctification.

Lee’s interpretation that habits have a sense of ontological permanence means Edwards’ occasionalism is not a pure occasionalism, or creationism, in which God creates all things ex nihilo at every moment. For this reason, Edwards can argue that the created world has a sense of ontological permanence even though it depends on God for its existence at all times. As we shall see, this ontological permanence establishes the grounds for genuine human action. When God created the world, He did so solely according to His sovereign will and power. Nevertheless, in creating the world, God also fixed the very habits by which He would act in all of His future actions.[21] These habits are “given a permanence” by God in such a way that He does not recreate them “ex nihilo every moment” but instead “moves the world from virtuality to full actuality every moment through an immediate exercise of his power” according to and through those very habits.[22] When God created the world ex nihilo there was nothing governing His actions other than His will. But in every moment since creation, God brings the world into actuality according to the habits He established in His very act of creating the world. God does not, therefore, recreate the habits by which He brings the world into actuality at every moment and so there is something to which He gives a sense of ontological permanence. The world does not, therefore, exist according to Crisp’s motion picture analogy. The ontological permanence God gives habits means the world does not go out of existence only to be recreated at every moment. When thinking of Edwards’ occasionalism it is better to think of God sustaining creation at every moment according to the same habits He fixed when created the world rather than thinking He creates the entire universe in every moment. In response to Crisp’s interpretation of Original Sin, Lee might argue that it is not as though the world has no continuous identity and permanence at all. Instead, Edwards means to say that any such identity and permanence wholly depends on “God’s sovereign constitution.” In short, Edwards’ intention is not to do away with identity and permanence, but to demonstrate that God is the sole cause of identity and permanence. In this way, Edwards’ occasionalism is such that the world fully depends on God for its existence and for its sense of ontological permanence, which is given to it by God according the habits by which He continually sustains its existence.

The ontological permanence of the world achieved in Edwards’ occasionalism is important because it provides Edwards with the foundation necessary to make an argument for genuine human action. With this understanding of Edwards’ occasionalism as our foundation, we can examine his idea of “moral necessity,” which he derives by applying his idea of habit as disposition to human action. He defines moral necessity in Freedom of the Will as “the necessity of connection and consequence, which arises from such moral causes, as the strength of the inclination, or motives, and the connection which there is in many cases between these, and such volitions and actions.”[23] In other words, the will chooses to perform actions according to its inclinations, or motivations, which are nothing other than its habits, or dispositions. In turn, the will necessarily chooses to perform an action towards which it is inclined when it is given the occasion to act according to its disposition. As Lee notes, in the case of the will, a habit “is more than custom or the regular way something happens or is done.” That is, a habit is not simply an individual’s persistent vice or daily morning routine, but is a disposition that “actively brings about events of a particular sort” by inclining an individual’s will towards those particular events.[24] Because the will acts according to and is determined by its dispositions, there is a necessary connection between its disposition to choose a certain action and its actual choice of that certain action.[25] Edwards calls this necessary connection moral necessity, and by it, habits as dispositions determine human action.

Building on his argument for moral necessity, the core of Edwards’ doctrine of sanctification is that the Holy Spirit indwells the Christian as a “vital principle [or habit] in the soul” and “becomes a fountain of true holiness and joy.”[26] Sanctification begins after the act of regeneration in which “God . . . implants one heavenly seed in the soul” to serve as a new habit, or disposition, that inclines the Christian towards God and, in turn, towards holy actions out of a love for God.[27] Sanctification, then, “is a continuation of the work that has already begun in the regenerate persons” because it is the exercise of the disposition God implants in the act of regeneration. This exercise necessarily follows the implantation of the new disposition since, as argued in the previous paragraph, the will necessarily acts according to its inclinations.[28] Moreover, the “heavenly seed” implanted in the Christian through regeneration is the Holy Spirit Himself. Thus, when Edwards argues that “God works or effects the whole of the matter” in sanctification, he means both that God causes the Christian to receive a new disposition and that God Himself is the very disposition implanted in the Christian.[29] For this reason, God alone is the cause of sanctification: He implants the disposition and His Spirit is that very disposition.

Nevertheless, because the Holy Spirit acts as a disposition within the Christian, it is not as though God adds sanctification to a Christian in such a way that reduces the Christian to a passive object on an assembly line. Rather, God sanctifies the Christian through a habit, the very means of human action. In acting as a habit, or vital principle, in the Christian, the Holy Spirit does not cause sanctification by adding holiness to a Christian but rather by “acting in, upon, and with the soul.”[30] The Christian, therefore, is not reduced to a passive object on an assembly line to which God adds holiness bit by bit. It is rather the case that the Holy Spirit becomes “united to human faculties” and “acts very much after the manner of a natural principle or habit” of the will.[31] The Spirit thus achieves the very same function as any other habit of the will: it inclines the will towards a certain kind of action—in this case, acts of holiness which are performed out of love for God—and these actions occur necessarily insofar as the will is determined by its habits according to moral necessity. The difference between the Holy Spirit as a habit in the soul and a natural habit is that the Spirit is implanted in the Christian “by grace and covenant, and not from any natural necessity.”[32] Therefore, even though “it is God who works in [them], both to will and to work,” as a disposition towards holiness, Christians can genuinely “work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling,” since God causes sanctification through the very means of human action.[33]

With this in mind, we can see that Edwards’ occasionalism serves as the very grounds for the continuance of sanctification. We can draw this out of Edwards’ argument that it is the Holy Spirit Himself that serves as the Christian’s disposition towards holiness. Edwards did not hold a doctrine akin to “Aquinas’s idea of ‘created grace’ that is distinguishable from the Holy Spirit.”[34] That is, nothing other than the Holy Spirit Himself acts as a vital principle in the Christian. Thus, in order for the Christian to persist in his pursuit of holiness, the Holy Spirit must be present in the Christian at every moment after God regenerates him. To Edwards, it is not as though we can argue that God need only change a Christian’s disposition at one point in time—as if He were changing the battery in a watch—and then leave the rest to the Christian. “If God should take his Spirit out of the soul,” argues Edwards, “all habits and acts of grace would of themselves cease as immediately as light ceases in a room when a candle is carried out.”[35] In other words, if God withdraws the Holy Spirit, the Christian would no longer be inclined towards holiness since the Holy Spirit is the very disposition towards holiness in the Christian. Therefore, God alone is the cause of sanctification in three ways. First, He implants in the Christian a disposition that inclines towards holiness. Second, the Holy Spirit Himself is that very disposition. And third, as the cause of all things at all times, God causes the continued presence of the Spirit in the Christian that is necessary for the continuance of sanctification. God’s continued and immediate causation in sanctification does not reduce it to an impersonal assembly-line process but, in fact, prevents sanctification from becoming something impersonal in the first place. Rather than treating Christians like objects on an assembly or changing the disposition of a Christian at one moment and then stepping back as though He were winding a watch, God’s Spirit remains in the Christian every step of the way, acting as a disposition towards holiness in the very will of the Christian. In this way, Edwards’ idea of habit as disposition harmonizes the sovereign action of God with genuine human action. We might say that two voices sing one song in sanctification: God is the lead singer who causes and leads the song. Once God, so to speak, teaches a Christian the song, he or she can sing along in harmony with God. Yet Christians are never without God’s close guidance in singing this sweetest of songs. At every step of the way, He sustains the voice—the presence of His own Spirit—He has implanted in them, and He invites them to join Him in singing praises to His love and glory. In this way, the influence Edwards’ occasionalism has on his doctrine of sanctification results in a deeply personal and intimate moment-by-moment account of sanctification.

Jonathan Edwards’ metaphysics flows out of his theology in such a way that it supports and strengthens his doctrinal positions. Edwards builds his metaphysics according to the overall soteriological orientation of his works. This is particularly evident in the way his idea of habit as disposition shapes the influence his occasionalism has on his doctrine of sanctification. Edwards’ idea of habit allows him to argue both that the world is fully dependent on God for its existence at all times and that the world has a sense of ontological permanence. This ontological permanence protects Edwards’ occasionalism from eradicating the grounds for genuine human action because it means the world is not reduced to a motion picture in which all things are recreated at every moment. Building on this metaphysical foundation, Edwards argues that all human action happens according to moral necessity, which means the will always acts according to its habits, or dispositions. In turn, he argues that God is the sole and sovereign cause of sanctification insofar as He implants a disposition towards holiness in the Christian, His Spirit is that very disposition, and He sustains the presence of His Spirit in the Christian at every moment after regeneration. In this way, Edwards’ idea of habit serves as a link between his occasionalism and doctrine of sanctification, and it allows him to harmonize God’s absolute sovereignty with human action in the act of sanctification. In reflecting on his doctrine of “a gracious nature being by the immediate influence of the Spirit of God” (176), Edwards would remind Christians to “think of God as kindly communicating himself to [them] and holding communion with [them], as though [they] did as it were see God smiling on [them], giving to [them] and conversing with [them].” Thus, Edwards would encourage the contemporary Christian to drink deeply of the joy to be found in knowing that God smiles upon His people in every moment, sustaining an intimate and personal sanctifying relationship with each of His children. Drawing such rich truths from Edwards’ metaphysics, a Christian can smile joyfully, fully assured that there is a reason for joy in every moment.

Bibliography

Crisp, Oliver D. “Jonathan Edwards’ Ontology: A Critique of Sang Hyun Lee’s Dispositional

Account of Edwardian Metaphysics.” Religious Studies 46, no. 1 (March 2010): 1-20. Accessed November 14, 2013. ProQuest Research Library.

Edwards, Jonathan. Efficacious Grace, Book I. In Vol. 21, The Writings of Jonathan Edwards: Writings on the

Trinity, Grace, and Faith, edited by Sang Hyun Lee, 198-222. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Edwards, Jonathan. Freedom of the Will. Mineola: Dover Publications, 2012.

Edwards, Jonathan. “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence.” In Select Sermons, edited by Abby Zwart,

80-91. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Accessed November 3, 2013. Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Edwards, Jonathan. “The Mind.” In Vol. 6, The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Scientific and Philosophical

Writings, edited by Wallace E. Anderson, 332-393. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

Edwards, Jonathan. “Miscellanies,” No. 241. In Vol. 13, The Works of Jonathan Edwards: The

“Miscellanies,” a-500, edited by Thomas A. Schafer, 357-358. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Edwards, Jonathan. “Subjects to Be Handled in the Treatise on the Mind.” In Vol. 6, The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Scientific and Philosophical Writings, edited by Wallace E. Anderson, 387-393. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

Edwards, Jonathan. Treatise on Grace. In Vol. 21, The Writings of Jonathan Edwards: Writings on the Trinity,

Grace, and Faith, edited by Sang Hyun Lee, 149-197. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Lee, Sang Hyun. The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1988.

McClymond, Michael J. “Hearing the Symphony: A Critique of Some Critics of Sang Lee’s and Amy

Pauw’s Accounts of Jonathan Edwards’s View of God.” In Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary: Essays in Honor of Sang Hyun Lee, edited by Don Schweitzer, 67-92. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. Accessed November 16, 2013. http://0-site.ebrary.com.library.hillsdale.edu/lib/hillsdale/docDetail.action?docID=10516943

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Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

[1] Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies,” No. 241, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: The “Miscellanies,” a-500, ed. Thomas A Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), Vol. 13: 358.

[2] Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 38.

[4] Unless, however, the vinegar and baking soda mixed together have already been used in producing carbon dioxide gas and no longer have enough ingredients for the reaction. In this case, the occasions required for the production of carbon dioxide gas would not be met and, therefore, no carbon dioxide would be produced.

[6] Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 109-110.

[7] Jonathan Edwards, “Subjects to Be Handled in the Treatise on the Mind,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Scientific and Philosophical Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), Vol. 6: 391-392.

[11] Jonathan Edwards, “The Mind,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Scientific and Philosophical Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), Vol. 6: 385. Also quoted in Lee, Philosophical Theology, 62, and Anri Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 58.

[13] Oliver D. Crisp, “Jonathan Edwards’ Ontology: A Critique of Sang Hyun Lee’s Dispositional Account of Edwardian Metaphysics,” Religious Studies 46, no. 1 (March 2010): paragraph 2, accessed November 14, 2013, ProQuest Research Library.

[14] Crisp, “Edwards’ Ontology,” paragraph 24.

[15] Quoted in Crisp, “Edwards’ Ontology,” paragraph 32.

[18] Michael J. McClymond, “Hearing the Symphony: A Critique of Some Critics of Sang Lee’s and Amy Pauw’s Accounts of Jonathan Edwards’s View of God,” in Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary: Essays in Honor of Sang Hyun Lee, ed. Don Schweitzer (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 70, accessed November 16, 2013, http://0-site.ebrary.com.library.hillsdale.edu/lib/hillsdale/docDetail.action?docID=10516943.

[19] Crisp, “Edwards’ Ontology,” paragraph 28.

[20] Crisp, “Edwards’ Ontology,” paragraph 35.

[21] “All of God’s actions, except the original creation, involve some adherence to fixed laws. Laws, it is seen, are essentially permanent once created.” Lee, Philosophical Theology, 70.

[23] Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2012), 18-19. Also quoted in Lee, Philosophical Theology, 37.

[26] Jonathan Edwards, “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” in Select Sermons, ed. Abby Zwart (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 86, accessed November 3, 2013, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

[27] Jonathan Edwards, Treatise on Grace, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, ed. Sang Hyun Lee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), Vol. 21: 166.

[29] Jonathan Edwards, Efficacious Grace, Book I, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, ed. Sang Hyun Lee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), Vol. 21: 218.

[34] McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 398.