The Church

Scripture focus

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.

Ephesians 5:25 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Edwards's bitter 1750 separation from his own congregation has shaped how readers see his whole ecclesiology, reinforced by later revivalism's tendency to prize individual 'decisions for Christ' over institutional church life. Because Edwards never wrote a single treatise on the church, that impression has to be tested against scattered evidence in his notebooks, sermons, and occasional writings — evidence that points a different direction.

Edwards, in fact, minimized the traditional Puritan distinction between an invisible church of the truly elect and a visible institutional church, insisting there is really one church under two aspects, united to Christ. Late in life he came to prefer Presbyterian church government, with its trans-local authority, over what he called the 'unsettled, independent, confused way' of New England Congregationalism — and Humble Attempt (1747) envisioned individual believers gathered into congregations, congregations into regional bodies, and national churches into a genuinely worldwide 'visible union of God's people.'

This ecclesiology was grounded in eternity itself: before creation, the persons of the Trinity entered a 'covenant of redemption' in which the elect were chosen not as isolated individuals but as members already united to Christ and to one another. The church, on this reading, is the place within creation where God's self-communicating glory becomes visible — which is why Edwards's vision of unity resembles, in surprising ways, the twentieth-century ecumenical movement's own language of a unity that must be 'made visible.'

Key points

• Edwards minimized the traditional Puritan distinction between the invisible church of the truly elect and the visible institutional church, insisting there is one church under two aspects.
• Though he wrote no single treatise on the church, his notebooks and Humble Attempt reveal a far higher ecclesiology than the individualism often attributed to the revival tradition.
• Late in life Edwards preferred Presbyterian trans-local church government over what he called the 'unsettled, independent, confused way' of New England Congregationalism.
• Humble Attempt (1747) envisioned local congregations nested within regional and international bodies, anticipating themes later associated with the ecumenical movement.
• Edwards grounded the church in the pre-temporal 'covenant of redemption' among the Trinity's persons, so the elect are chosen not as isolated individuals but as members of Christ's body.

A line worth remembering

For Edwards, there were not two churches--one visible and the other invisible--but only one church under two aspects.

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 28

Related Scripture

• 1 Corinthians 12:12-13
• Colossians 1:18
• Acts 2:42
• Ephesians 4:15-16

For reflection and discussion

1. Why might a painful personal conflict with one congregation not settle the question of what someone actually believes about the church as a whole?
2. What is gained, and what is risked, by treating the visible and invisible church as one reality rather than two?
3. How does grounding the church in an eternal 'covenant of redemption' change the stakes of church unity today?