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When Holy Angels Could Fall Away: Jonathan Edwards on Angelic Probation and Final Confirmation

Months before his unexpected death, Jonathan Edwards’s correspondence and his theological notebooks reveal that he was getting ready to write a significant work on redemptive history which sought to cast theology “into the form of a history;” a narrative which would span three worlds: heaven, earth, and hell. This paper examines one part of this narrative: how Edwards understood the history of the angels from the fall of Satan to the ascension of Christ. I will argue that Edwards puts forth a novel understanding of the timing the angels’ confirmation (i.e. angelic reconciliation in Christ). On the one hand, Edwards affirmed with the majority of the medieval schoolmen (and the Puritans) that the holy angels are “confirmed” after they have successfully passed a trial of obedience. On the other hand, Edwards placed the angels’ confirmation at a far later date than the tradition had normally argued (which was early in primeval history, shortly after Satan’s fall and the casting of the reprobate angels out of heaven). For Edwards, by contrast, the angels’ confirmation took place only after Christ had ascended to heaven. He believed the angels required a thorough and hence lengthy testing of their obedience if they were to be rewarded with eternal happiness. Because God is reconciling all things to himself in Christ (Col. 1:20) their testing required the angels to remain obedient to Christ throughout every phase of his earthly ministry, an obedience that was quite unnatural to them (angels being of a superior nature to humans). Their trial ended only after Christ ascended to heaven. The paper will develop this thesis by first exploring Edwards’s understanding of the period of angelic probation: what the angels knew about Christ and the gospel before the advent of Christ, how they ministered to God’s people before his advent, and why it was possible that they could fall away throughout this long period. Next, it will look at the event of the angels’ confirmation itself: how they were supernaturally gifted with a security of perseverance where they no longer were able to sin, and why Edwards believed this was the most suitable time in salvation history to grant the elect angels this blessing. Lastly, it will explore how Edwards envisioned this event to bring about a significant transformation to both heaven and to the angels themselves. The paper further illuminates what Edwards scholars have been increasingly coming to realize in recent years: that he was a theologian of redemptive history who thought about the theology of the bible through a primarily historical framework.

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Recent Publications

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