Jonathan Edwards: The Theologian of Joy

I have been searching for joy my entire life, and I believe I am not alone. If pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is correct, then we are all on the same quest. The reason is because we were created for joy. Yet the quest to find it—that is, true spiritual happiness—often leads us to seemingly innumerable dead ends. Some men and women seek joy in romantic relationships or in wealth. Others pursue it in thrill-seeking adventures such as rock climbing, base jumping, and sky diving. Still others seek joy in far more nefarious places: illicit drugs, alcohol, unrestrained sexual expression, even the absurdities and banalities of Facebook or hours of television. Despite the universality of our search, many of us have discovered the brutal fact that finding joy—lasting happiness—is more difficult than it would first appear.

My own confessional heritage reminds me in the first answer of the Shorter Catechism that “man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever” (emphasis added). So also, Holy Scripture is replete with references to joy. A simple word search for “joy” and a few of its variants (enjoy, rejoice, and so on) returns hundreds of occurrences. But if joy is so ubiquitous in Scripture, then why does it seem so elusive in real life? And if we find it, how can we maintain it?

Part of the problem in my own search for joy, ironically, was my job of pastoral ministry. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve loved being a pastor. But often instead of being content, I found myself more stressed out, agitated, and irritable than I had been in my whole life. I lacked joy.

I started to gain some ground on my quest when I began to seriously read Jonathan Edwards for my doctoral dissertation. As I read, I noticed that this bewigged Puritan spoke of joy more copiously and profusely than any writer I had ever encountered before. Whatever joy Edwards saw in his relationship with Christ, which he described in his writings, I wanted. Edwards’s ability to rejoice in the praise of our Trinitarian God was captivating enough for me to want to study it deeply. What follows is my attempt to summarize the ideas of Jonathan Edwards, the theologian of joy.

Let me briefly introduce the three main themes I’ve encountered in his works. First, Edwards argues in many places that joy is an attribute of God himself, and that it can be discerned in and among the three persons of the Trinity. This explains why joy is so common, even central, to Edwards’s theology as a whole. Second, Edwards is clear in many places that humanity was created with a great capacity for joy. Consequently, we pursue joy aimlessly until we find it in Christ alone. Third, Edwards believed that heaven will be the great domain in which joy is most fully realized. Because of this, we can expect to continue to find ourselves ever longing for joy in this life. Let’s explore each of these concepts more fully.

(1) Eternal Joy within the Trinitarian Godhead

First, Edwards believed that joy is rooted in the character and nature of God: “It is evident, both by Scripture and reason, that God is infinitely, eternally, unchangeably, and independently glorious and happy.”1 Before we can even speak about joy as a “religious affection” (his famous term) we humans experience, Edwards would have us begin at the true source of joy: God himself. “There is an infinite fullness of all possible good in God, a fullness of every perfection, of all excellency and beauty, and of infinite happiness.”2 He says simply that “God is self-sufficient. His happiness is in Himself. As His being is necessary and underived, so is his happiness and glory.”3 Just as holiness, love, justice, and other attributes are proper to the nature of God intrinsically, so too is joy. Describing God in his essence, Edwards says,

He is powerful and He will be powerful; He is glorious and he will be glorious; he is infinitely honorable, but he receives honor from himself; he is infinitely happy and he will be infinitely happy; he reigns and rules over the whole universe and he will rule and do what he pleases.4

Two illustrations or analogies Edwards uses quite often (actually for a variety of theological doctrines) are that of the light emanating from the sun and refreshing water springing from its fountain source. One cannot read broadly in his works without seeing these analogies used in various contexts. In order to discuss the effects of a thing (the light), we must press further to come to understand the source of that thing (the sun). Or, when we want to drink refreshing spring water, we will be drawn to trace out and discover its source—the very fountain from whence it flows. In the following quotation from The End for Which God Created the World, Edwards applies (and even mixes) these familiar analogies to joy within God’s own nature:

There is an infinite fountain of light and knowledge that this light should shine forth in beams of communicated knowledge and understanding: and there is an infinite fountain of holiness, moral excellence and beauty, so it should flow out in communicated holiness. And that as there is an infinite fullness of joy and happiness, so these should have an emanation, and become a fountain flowing out in abundant streams, as beams from the sun.5

On several significant occasions, Edwards argues that joy is a proper attribute of God himself, and that joy can be discerned in and between the three persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.6 In a lesser-known work, Observations Concerning the Scripture Oeconomy of the Trinity, Edwards discusses the Trinity.7 Edwards’s goal for this work is to describe the “covenant of redemption” in which the Father and the Son agreed, before the creation of the world, to redeem a particular people for God from among men. For our purposes, we are interested in how Edwards incorporated joy and delight into this covenantal framework. At the beginning of this treatise in a passage critical to the argument of the whole, Edwards expresses the Father’s delight and enjoyment of the Son:

[The Son] is the brightness of [the Father’s] glory; the very image of the Father, the express and perfect image of His person. And therefore, the Father’s infinite happiness is in Him, and the way that the Father enjoys the glory of the deity is in enjoying Him.8

In a way, the whole essay depends on this happy premise. The Father enjoys the Son and rejoices in him. All that they will do as a Trinitarian One, they will do for their own joy. For the rest of the essay, Edwards works off of this important premise: God is a God of joy. The Trinity, Edwards says, is a “society” by which the three persons are in complete agreement and harmony in “carrying on the great design of glorifying the deity and communicating its fullness.”9

Throughout the next twenty pages or so, Edwards then discusses the intricacies of the various roles within the Godhead in redeeming the world: the Father is “economically the king of heaven and earth, lawgiver and judge of all”; the Son “voluntarily and freely subjected Himself to from [sic] love to sinners, and engaged to perform for them in the covenant of redemption”; and the Holy Spirit, “till the work of redemption shall be finished, will continue to act under the Son.”10 It is impossible for us to ignore the way Edwards frames the whole doctrine of the Trinity around the mutual joy of the three persons. In short, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit agree together in mutual beneficence to redeem a particular people, for the sake of God’s own delight and pleasure, which he holds in his divine unity. God wants us, too, to experience his joy.

(2) Humanity Created for Joy

Second, Edwards clearly states that humanity was created to participate in God’s own joy.11 One of his simplest definitions of happiness is this: “When the creature is in that state that is most agreeable to the proper perfection of its nature, then it is in its most happy state.”12 And since humanity has a massive capacity for happiness, Edwards held, then we are happiest in Christ. Happiness is not just peripheral to our understanding of our general purpose in being; it is central. When we are out of joint with our purpose in being, we will feel a great longing in our souls that beckons to be satisfied. Our hearts will ache for satisfaction. This is because joy is not merely incidental to our being; it is vital. Since “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”13 is our chief end, as Jonathan Edwards recognized, he commonly discusses joy as our great design in creation, inextricably bound to our duty and purpose in existence. Edwards argued forcefully from logic and Scripture that joy is central to God’s very purpose for creating intelligent creatures. In his Miscellany #3, Edwards specifically states:

Happiness is the end of the creation, as appears by this, because the creation had as good not be, as not rejoice in its being. For certainly it was the goodness of the Creator that moved him to create; and how can we conceive of another end proposed by goodness, than that he might delight in seeing the creatures he made rejoice in that being that he has given them?14

To fill out our discussion on the centrality of joy in humanity’s being, we will look briefly at Edwards’s 1728 sermon “Safety, Fullness, and Sweet Refreshment in Christ.” Here, although he speaks of the chief end of humanity, he approaches this topic through another route: the universality of our longing for joy. In this sermon, Edwards asks an important rhetorical question: “What is it that the soul of every man naturally and necessarily craves?” He immediately answers his own question: “The soul of every man necessarily craves happiness.”15

Logically, he holds, we crave that for which we were created. We naturally long to do what we were designed to do and to experience what we were created to experience. Just as butterflies were created for flight, so also human beings were created to experience joy. Humanity loves happiness. We need joy, and we know this to be the great pursuit of life. In this sermon, Edwards says that this craving for happiness cannot be easily dismissed: “This craving of happiness must be insuperable, and . . . never can be changed; it never can be overcome, or in any way abated.”16 We cannot merely pretend this urge is not there, nor can we easily satisfy this urge with replacements or counterfeits. Edwards discusses the fact that this longing for happiness is universal to all humans, regardless of age, gender, or moral condition. Striking an Augustinian note, he adds that “every creature is restless till it enjoys what is equal to the capacity of its nature.”17

At this point, Edwards begins to build his case more forcefully. Since the capacity of humanity’s joy is great, there must be an object of infinite worth that alone can fill it. While food, water, air, and sex fill longings in the physical body, they do nothing to abate the longings intrinsic to the soul. In an important statement, crucial to his overall argument, Edwards writes: “Man is of such a nature that he is capable of an exceedingly great degree of happiness; he is made of a vastly higher nature than the brutes, and therefore he must have vastly higher happiness to satisfy.”18 Continuing to unfold this line of argumentation, he adds:

It must therefore be an incomprehensible object that must satisfy the soul; it will never be contented with that, and only that, to which it can see an end, it will never be satisfied with that happiness to which it can find a bottom.19

Finally, he progresses toward the inevitable conclusion, which is so obvious now to those who have studied his writings: “The excellency of Christ is an object adequate to the natural cravings of the soul, and is sufficient to fill the capacity.”20 Christ alone, who presents the offer of eternal peace and enjoyment in the presence of God through the gospel of his cross, can fully bring “fullness and sweet refreshment” to the hungry soul.

(3) The Believer’s Eternal Joy in Heaven and the Beatific Vision

Finally, Edwards believed that heaven would be the great domain in which joy is most fully apprehended and experienced by the redeemed of God. It was almost impossible for him to write about joy without also mentioning heaven; or conversely, for the great Puritan to write about heaven without also speaking of its incomparable joys. In fact, the closer Edwards comes to heaven in his writings, the more the affections—especially joy—are stirred up in his writings. In a key text in Religious Affections, he states:

If we can learn anything of the state of heaven from Scripture, the love and joy that the saints have there is exceeding great and vigorous; impressing the heart with the strongest and most lively sensation of inexpressible sweetness, mightily moving, animating, and engaging them, making them like a flame of fire. And if such love and joy be not affections, then the word affection has no use in language.21

Edwards reserved the believers’ experience of eternal joys in heaven as the highest of all possible joys, because there redeemed humanity will behold the face of God. This is often called the “beatific vision,” which Edwards defines in Miscellany #1137: “The beatifical vision of God in heaven consists mostly in beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, either in his work or in his person as appearing in the glorified human nature.”22 This great event takes place in redemption history when the saints pass into the glorious presence of our Heavenly Father either at death, or after the return of Jesus and the judgment of the world. Once commenced, the beatific vision will carry on for eternity as the saints continue to rejoice in the glory of God.

The beatific vision often fueled and empowered Edwards’s preaching. With a reputation of being a fire-and-brimstone preacher, Edwards was barely able to steer his mind away from the fires of hell, much less temper his pulpit rhetoric. Of course, based on the much wider survey of his writings, we can see that this reputation is ill-deserved. One of the places in which Edwards describes the glories and realities of heaven both attractively and winsomely is in his 1738 sermons “Charity and Its Fruits,” a sixteen-part series that he preached on the text of 1 Corinthians 13. This series proves once and for all that Edwards spoke of the glories and joys of heaven even more forcefully and convincingly than he spoke of hell’s horrors. Probably the best-known sermon in the series is the conclusion of the whole, a sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:8–10 titled “Heaven, a World of Charity or Love.” The title alone is refreshingly clear. In this sermon, Edwards describes the glorious nature of heaven in a way that artfully foils (or even surpasses) the terrifying images he conjured up to describe hell in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” For this reason, the two sermons should probably be more frequently read as a pair. Edwards begins:

The God of love himself dwells in heaven. Heaven is the palace or presence-chamber of the high and holy One, whose name is love, and who is both the cause and source of all holy love. . . . Heaven is a part of creation that God has built for this end, to be the place of his glorious presence, and it is his abode forever; and here will he dwell, and gloriously manifest himself to all eternity. And this renders heaven a world of love, as the sun is the fountain of light. And therefore the glorious presence of God in heaven fills heaven with love, as the sun, placed in the midst of the visible heavens in a clear day, fills the world with light.23

In this grounding paragraph, central to his view of heaven, Edwards draws on allusions to Revelation 21:1–8 and 22:1–5 (with special reference to 22:5), employing of course his favorite illustrations of sun/light and fountain/water to describe the outflowing of God’s glory in heaven. Central to the doctrine of the beatific vision is the unmitigated presence of God himself shining on and filling up his saints with the glory of his manifest presence. There, we will look upon God without being destroyed as we would be now in our unglorified state.

Throughout the whole sermon, Edwards’s majestic language never flags, consistently boiling over in cheerful and joyful praise: “There, even in heaven, dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is, or ever was proceeds.”24 God is not merely incidentally present in heaven but also gloriously and dominantly overpowering. Consistent with the whole of the sermon series, Edwards shows how this joyful love that fills heaven with God’s glory and peace is reflected, not only back to God but also to other believers—even the angels:

And the saints and angels are secondarily the subjects of holy love, not as those in whom it is as in an original seat, as light is in the sun, but as it is in the planets, that shine only by reflected light. And the light of their love is reflected in the first place, and chiefly, back to its source. As God has given the saints and angels love, so their love is chiefly exercised towards God its fountain.25

Heaven is ultimately about God, and only penultimately about us. True enough, Edwards discusses the ways that we will more fully love one another than ever before possible on earth, the ways in which we will admire the beauty and strength of the angels, and even how the saints will rejoice in our own state of existence more purely than ever before. For instance, Edwards conjectures that we will take joy even in those who have a capacity for more joy than we ourselves possess. Since heaven is a place in which all of the creatures are humble and without pride, having entered a glorified state of existence, there is no place for jealousy, even for those whose eternal reward is greater than our own.26 Yet he never detracts from his all-encompassing, all-thrilling joy in and of God, both as the source and the sustainer of the saints’ everlasting happiness.

Edwards closes out the sermon series as a whole by imploring believers to consider often the joys of love in heaven’s state of perfection, to stir up a desire to be there in our own hearts, to be patient through our trials and tribulations on our way to heaven, and to fix our eyes on Jesus whose glorious face we will see once there.

And oh! What joy will there be, springing up in the hearts of the saints, after they have passed through their wearisome pilgrimage, to be brought to such a paradise as this! Here is joy unspeakable indeed, and full of glory—joy that is humble, holy, enrapturing, and divine in its perfection.27

Conclusion

I cannot say just yet that I truly and fully apprehend Edwards’s view of joy. In fact, if he is correct in his understandings of happiness, I won’t be able to completely do that until I reach heaven. But I do believe that drinking deeply from this Puritan’s understanding of real happiness greatly aids my quest for it here in this mortal life.

In this article, we noted three broadly identifiable themes in the works of Jonathan Edwards in relation to his theology of joy. While these three themes certainly do not exhaust the doctrine of Jonathan Edwards on joy, they do seem to encapsulate the primary constructs and trajectories in his writings on this topic. By way of recapitulation, we covered first Edwards’s insistence that the Holy Trinity is a joyful union of the three divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Tied to this, we saw in Edwards a proclivity to speak of joy as a capacity written into the very fabric of humanity, since intelligent creatures were created for the pleasure of beholding God. Finally, Edwards works hard in his writings to inspire us to greatly anticipate heaven, where joy will reach the fullest, ultimate, and ever-increasing measure of delight.

Matthew Everhard is senior pastor of Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Brooksville, Florida. He is a graduate of Malone University, Ashland Theological Seminary, and Reformed Theological Seminary. His unpublished RTS doctoral dissertation is titled “A Theology of Joy: Jonathan Edwards and Eternal Happiness in the Holy Trinity.” He is the author of Hold Fast the Faith: A Devotional Commentary on the Westminster Confession of 1647 (Reformation Press, 2012).