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Scripture focus
...but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:11 KJV
At a glance
Did Edwards quietly move justification toward a Catholic doctrine of infused righteousness?
He kept justification by faith alone, but rooted it in real union with Christ in a way some scholars think blurred it with sanctification.
Summary of the chapter
The Reformation drew a sharp line between justification and sanctification. Justification, the Reformers insisted, was God's instantaneous, forensic verdict, based entirely on Christ's righteousness imputed — reckoned — to the believer, never on any goodness worked within them. Sanctification was the lifelong, incomplete process of actually becoming holy that followed from it. Rome, by contrast, tied acceptance with God to an infusion of grace-produced virtue in the soul itself, so that justification could increase through cooperation.
Preaching in Northampton in 1734 against a 'great noise... about Arminianism' — a loose New England label for confidence that sincere moral effort could win God's favor — Edwards insisted believers are justified by faith in Christ alone, not by any virtue of their own. Yet he grounded that faith not in a bare legal transaction but in the soul's prior, real union with Christ, of which faith is itself 'the very act of unition.' Critics from Thomas Schafer to Anri Morimoto have argued this move quietly widened 'faith alone' until it approached later Catholic and Orthodox categories.
Edwards's own descendant Tryon Edwards was uneasy enough about the appearance of Catholic 'infusion' language that he silently deleted the word from a nineteenth-century edition of Charity and Its Fruits. Recent scholarship is divided: some find Edwards's Reformed credentials intact, since imputation remains the legal ground even where union is the deeper reality; others see a genuine departure that anticipates today's ecumenical rapprochement on salvation.
Key points
- The Reformed tradition sharply separated justification (God's legal verdict, based on Christ's imputed righteousness) from sanctification (the lifelong inward process of growing holiness).
- Preaching against 1730s New England 'Arminianism' — confidence that sincere effort could earn God's favor — Edwards defended justification by faith alone.
- Edwards grounded justification not merely in a legal transaction but in the soul's real, prior union with Christ, of which faith is the 'act of unition.'
- Because he treated love and obedience as intrinsic to the 'consenting disposition' of faith, critics like Thomas Schafer argued he practically dissolved 'faith alone.'
- Edwards's descendant Tryon Edwards was so uneasy about the appearance of Catholic 'infusion' language that he edited it out of a nineteenth-century edition of Charity and Its Fruits.
A line worth remembering
Tryon was right to fear that his great-grandfather's writings could cause confusion.
McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 25
Related Scripture
- Romans 3:24
- Romans 5:1
- Titus 3:5
- Galatians 2:16
For reflection and discussion
- What is lost, theologically, if justification and sanctification are collapsed into a single process?
- Why would grounding justification in 'real union with Christ' worry Reformed critics, and why might it also seem more spiritually satisfying?
- How would you explain, in plain words, the difference between being declared righteous and being made righteous?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 25, “Justification and Sanctification” — in The Theology of Jonathan Edwards by Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott (Oxford University Press, 2012).