The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

In 1734 Edwards preached a two-unit lecture on justification (Romans 4:5) that, in a revised and expanded form, was published in 1738 as Justification by Faith Alone, the first and most prominent piece in Discourses on Various Important Subjects. As Edwards prepared first to write this lecture and then to revise it for publication, justification emerges in the "Miscellanies" as a dominant theme. There is consequently a close relation between the "Miscellanies" and Justification by Faith Alone. In fact, this text, perhaps more than any other, supports the interpretation of the "Miscellanies"

as a collection of notes and drafts that Edwards intended for use in future publications. The original 1734 lecture relies only minimally on the "Miscellanies." But as Edwards revised his lecture for publication, he incorporated into it many ideas first articulated in miscellanies entries. Edwards probably wrote the concentration of justification-related entries extending from Nos. 668 to No. 729 as he revised the lecture for publication; however, the earliest entry having a direct relation to the published discourse is No. 315, which dates from 1727. From this entry to No. 729, the last written before the publication of the discourse, there are thirty-one entries listed in the "Table" under the heading of "Justification." Excerpts, revisions, and paraphrases of the majority of these entries can be found throughout Justification by Faith Alone. Although Edwards used the original lecture as the framework for the discourse, in significant measure he pieced together the discourse from compositions made first within the "Miscellanies."

The correspondence between the "Miscellanies" and Justification by Faith Alone is not exact. Issues that Edwards addresses at length in the original lecture— such as the claim "that when it is said, we are not justified by the works of the law it means only the works of the ceremonial law, not the moral law"— are neglected in the "Miscellanies."Lecture on Romans 4:5 (Nov. 1734). The doctrine of this lecture is the same as that of the published discourse: "We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of goodness of our own." JE delivered it probably as a mid-week lecture over two separate preaching occasions. Its fifty-four leaves contain numerous marks and annotations made while JE was revising the text for publication. Other issues that are integral to the discourse but absent from the lecture— such as the distinction between moral and natural fitness— are the subject of numerous entries. Moreover, both the lecture and the discourse are overtly polemical texts.The Breck controversy was not the only occasion for JE's delivery of the original sermon. As C. C. Goen points out, in Nov. 1734, the month of the sermon's delivery, William Rand, minister at Sunderland, was reported to have "advanced some new notions as to the doctrines of justification" (Works, 4, 17). At the outset of the lecture Edwards establishes its polemical context by giving his "congregation a brief account of the opinion that is by some maintained that I would oppose in this discourse."Lecture on Romans 4:5 (Nov. 1734), L. 1r. Similarly, in the preface to Discourses on Various Important Subjects, Edwards explicitly identifies the viewpoint that he opposes as "the Arminian scheme of justification by our own virtue."Discourses on Various Important Subjects, p. iv. In neither the lecture nor the discourse does Edwards name a specific minister or theologian as his opponent;

however, he gives a clear indication of the complex of views he associates with "Arminianism."Thomas A. Schafer notes, "There was probably not, in 1734, an avowed Arminian in the Puritan pulpits of New England; but the works of English divines like Samuel Clarke, John Tillotson, Isaac Barrow, and Daniel Whit by were beginning to be read" ("Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith," Church History, 20 [Dec. 1951], 55). On Arminianism in New England, see also Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (1966; rep. Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press, 1990), 188–215; Francis Albert Christie, "The Beginnings of Arminianism in New England," Papers of the American Society of Church History, Second Series, III (1912), 153–72; Gerald J. Goodwin, "The Myth of Arminian-Calvinism in Eighteenth-Century New England," New England Quarterly, XLI (June 1968), 213–237; C. C. Goen's introduction to Works, 4, 1–18; Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (1949; rep. Amherst, Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 101–30; and Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston, Beacon Press, 1955). According to Conrad Cherry, Edwards maintains in Justification by Faith that "the essence of Arminianism is its neonomianism," which "conceives faith as a new kind of obedience and the gospel as a new kind of law."Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 187. Anri Morimoto identifies Edwards' interpretation of the Arminian doctrine of justification with three claims: that "to justify means to pardon"; that "there is no imputation of Christ's righteousness"; and that "sincere obedience is sufficient in order to receive justification," for God "regards our imperfect human effort as perfect."Anri Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park, Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1995), 76. In the discourse Edwards structures his argument to address each of these points; in the "Miscellanies," however, he focuses on a more limited range of issues.

Unlike his practice in the lecture and the discourse, Edwards rarely refers in the "Miscellanies" to the polemical context in which he wrote entries on justification by faith. No. 829, which explicitly mentions "Arminians" whose "scheme" implies "that we are justified by our own merit," is exceptional. In keeping with the general lack of contextualization in the "Miscellanies," Edwards' opponent must be inferred from the course of argumentation he pursues. The principal issue that runs throughout these entries is the role of faith in the act of justification. Edwards considers several methods of clarifying this issue that were either absent from or undeveloped in the lecture. He distinguishes between different meanings of the word "condition" in order to specify the sense in which faith is a condition of justification (Nos. 315, 412, 659). In No. 669 he addresses the question "whether faith and repentance are two distinct things that in like manner are the conditions of justification." This entry forms the substance of the fifth objection appended to the discourse, but more important, Edwards begins to explore in this entry the two-part definition of justification

A page from "Miscellanies," Book 1, featuring entry No. 669, "Justification." Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

that dominates the discourse. "Justifying faith," he writes, "is conversant about two things. It is conversant about sin to be rejected and to be delivered from, and about positive good to be accepted and obtained." Building upon this distinction, Edwards argues in the discourse that justification does not simply consist in pardon, or the remission of sins, as his Arminian opponents maintain, but also includes the imputation of Christ's active righteousness.

Because "condition" is an ambiguous term that can describe the relation between justification and not only faith but various other graces (Nos. 315, 412), Edwards prefers in the discourse the aesthetic language of "fitness" or "suitableness." Although this approach is present in the lecture, Edwards develops it much more thoroughly in the "Miscellanies." Faith, he argues in No. 507, is "the active suitableness, or rather suiting, of the receiver with Christ and his redemption. 'Tis the active, direct suiting and according of the soul to the Redeemer, and to his salvation" (see also Nos. 416, 659). Fitness language avoids the causal connotation of the term "condition," but to ensure that his doctrine of justification does not make faith into a work, Edwards also distinguishes between "moral" and "natural" fitness (Nos. 647, 670, 682, 712). By this distinction Edwards attempts to eliminate from his doctrine of justification the implication that human acts have by nature a virtue or merit respected by God, "A person is morally fit for a state," he writes in No. 647, "when by his excellency or odiousness his excellency or odiousness commends him to it." To call the relation between faith and justification one of moral fitness is, therefore, equivalent to Arminianism, for it assumes that the human act of faith has in itself an excellency or loveliness that merits eternal salvation. A relation of natural fitness, however, has no implication of merit because it depends only upon "the beauty of that order there [is] in uniting those things that have a natural agreement and congruity, the one with the other" (No. 712).

Edwards also distinguishes between natural and moral fitness in order to defend the doctrine of imputation. Arminians considered this doctrine to be irrational and unjust, for it appears to assert that at the moment of justification the righteousness earned by Christ is transferred to one who is by nature unworthy to receive it. To describe the relation between faith and justification as one of natural fitness answers this charge more effectively than the traditional forensic explanation. Characterizing justification as meaning simply that believers are "looked on [as] suitable that Christ's satisfaction and merits should be theirs" obscures its ontological foundation, without which imputation appears to be the unjust transference

of an alien righteousness.Justification by Faith Alone, in Discourses on Various Important Subjects, p. 17 The concept of natural fitness emphasizes that imputation is preceded by a preexisting union with Christ. As Edwards states in No. 712, "God will neither impute Christ's righteousness to us, nor adjudge his benefits to us, unless we be in him; nor will he look upon us as being in him without an actual unition to him." Because the union with Christ, which occurs by faith, creates the ontological foundation necessary for imputation, it is fitting that the faithful are justified. "God sees it fit," Edwards writes in No. 568, "that they only that are one with Christ by their own act, should be looked upon as one in law." It is fitting that Christ's righteousness is transferred to the elect, for "[w]hat is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal."JE repeats this assertion in Justification by Faith Atone, p. 16, See Schafer's discussion of this passage ("Jonathan Edwards and Justification By Faith," 58–60) and Morimoto's response (pp. 84–90). By grounding justification in the reality of union with Christ, therefore, the concept of natural fitness rebuts the Arminian objection to imputation without making justification into a reward for meritorious works.

Although Edwards insists that justification is not conferred as a reward for faith, he also claims that God "does in some respect give [believers] happiness as a testimony of his respect to the loveliness of their holiness and good works" (No. 627). In both the "Miscellanies" and the discourse he attempts to resolve this apparent contradiction by differentiating between the quality of works before and following the union with Christ that occurs by faith. Before union there is nothing in human nature morally fit for a reward; following union, however, it is appropriate to speak of both moral fitness and reward. The "good works" of the saints "are not lovely to God in themselves," Edwards writes in No. 627; "they are lovely to him in Christ and beholding them not separately and by themselves, but as in Christ" (see also No. 712). Because of the imputation of Christ's righteousness, works acquire a virtue or merit that renders them subject to reward. The reward that saints receive for the perceived holiness of their works is not justification, however, but glorification. To identify justification as the reward would contradict Edwards' assertion that the relation between faith and justification is one of natural, not moral, fitness. It is "heaven itself with all its glory and happiness" that is conferred upon the saints as a reward for the holiness of their works (No. 671; see also No. 793). Edwards can therefore maintain that the communion of saints in heaven is hierarchical. Although all who are justified will ultimately be

glorified, "the degree of their happiness will be according to the degree of their holiness and good works" (No. 671).

The distinction between natural and moral fitness is integral to Justification by Faith Alone. Absent from the 1734 lecture, it is developed by Edwards in the "Miscellanies" for use in the published discourse. However, Edwards' analysis of the relation between faith and works did not end with publication of Justification by Faith Alone. No. 729, which he incorporated into the discourse's discussion of evangelical obedience, was probably the last justification-related entry written before publication. But it was the first entry listed under the new "Table" headings of "Justification, Obedience" and "Justification, Perseverance." A series of issues concerning obedience to the law, perseverance in the faith, and Christian practice generally, emerge as a dominant theme in the miscellanies of the latter 1730s. These issues arise from Edwards' extended analysis of the doctrine of justification by faith, and they ultimately transform every aspect of his soteriology, including his concept of spiritual knowledge.