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Abstract
The current study demonstrates that Jonathan Edwards constructed his doctrine of justification in light of union with Christ. Our interest in this study goes beyond confirming that Edwards upheld the Reformation doctrine. It is more methodological. That is, this study seeks to show how Edwards' formulation of union with Christ establishes the method and framework for understanding the doctrine of justification (ordo salutis) in light of redemptive history (historia salutis). By means of his union with Christ paradigm, Edwards is more concerned to understand how the believer's justification is secured in the historical objectivity of Christ's justification (historia salutis) rather than to sharpen the logical, causal, and even temporal order of the application of the graces of Christ (ordo salutis) at the expense of the historical dynamic of redemptive revelation. The union with Christ paradigm in Edwards' treatment of justification provides him with the Trinitarian and redemptive-historical (or covenantal-historical) framework with which to develop the three areas that are treated in this dissertation: (1) the imputation of Christ's righteousness; (2) the meaning of “by faith alone”; and (3) the Christian life after justification. The constitutive reality of imputation becomes the foundation of forensic justification. Faith, defined as the act of union, attributes the ground of justification to Christ alone, thus rejecting the involvement of the works notion with it. And the Christian life and justification are organically connected in the reality of union with Christ in that justification is not by works but not without works. Union with Christ as a theological method, for Edwards, brings historia salutis and ordo salutis into a unified perspective. Edwards' treatment of justification in light of union with Christ may well be a way of doing systematic theology that duly deserves new consideration.
