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Jonathan Edwards’ New England theology represents “the single most brilliant and most continuous indigenous theological tradition that America has produced.”1 Despite its brilliance, the collected works of Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, Jonathan Edwards Jr, Nathaniel Emmons, amongst others, rank as perhaps the most ignored body of theological literature in the history of theology.2 In the most recent decade, however, interest in Edwards and his successors, particularly with respect to the reception of Edwards’ ideas, has accelerated.3 Amongst those of the New England theological tradition to excite such interest is Jonathan Edwards Jr and in particular, his doctrine of the atonement.4 And while this otherwise limited interest has traditionally come more from historical theologians and church historians than any other source, there has emerged something of a sustained, and uniquely systematic theological interest in the recent literature, primarily in the form of theologically constructive projects and so-called retrieval theologies. What has revived this interest, particularly amongst systematic theologians, is equal-parts patient research and a new sense that the New Englanders after Jonathan Edwards Sr had more to say that was theological substantive than has been previously believed. We say patient research because while the New England theologians offer researchers a trove of literature—much of it yet to be explored—it mainly consists in sermons and smaller treatises of either a practical or ethical variety, next to nothing systematic. With the publication of Maltby Gelston’s (1766–1856), A Systematic Collection of Questions and Answers in Divinity, contemporary systematic theologians have access for the first time to a concise, organized summary of the theological peculiarities distinctive to the second generation of the tradition that owes its origin to the so-called Northampton Sage. This singular resource, with its 313 specific doctrinal questions and answers, provides insight into the intellectual development(s) of New England theology that compare with such early seminal works as Joseph Bellamy’s True Religion Delineated (1750) and Samuel Hopkins’ System of Doctrines Contained in Divine Revelation (1793).

That Gelston’s Systematic Collection has unique value for systematic theologians, over and above (or at least complimentary to) the works of Bellamy and Hopkins, is the chief interest of this editor’s introduction and proceeds in two stages to a conclusion. In the first stage, we lay out a biographical sketch of Gelston’s life. As a means of showing the value of Gelston’s work for contemporary systematic-theological scholarship, in stage two, we offer up a case study of the doctrine of atonement in New England theology, comparing Gelston’s set of atonement-specific questions and answers with those works on the atonement of his mentor, Jonathan Edwards Jr. Our comparative case study develops in the context of the larger developing New England Theological tradition from the perspective of one recent and compelling argument for Jonathan Edwards Jr’s “Penal Non-Substitution” model of atonement, put forward by the British philosophical theologian Oliver Crisp. We conclude with several suggestions for how a resource such as Gelston’s Systematic Collection might best serve the ever-growing research into this rich and controversial theological period of history. Let us turn our attention first to a brief biographical sketch of Gelston.

I. Biographical Sketch

Reverend Maltby Gelston was born, the only child of Hugh and Phoebe Gelston, on July 17, 1766 in Southampton, Long Island, New York.5 His father was a farmer of no mean significance, being a son of what appears to be a well-known and well-respected merchant and long-time magistrate, Judge Hugh Gelston of Belfast, Ireland. His mother was the daughter of David and Phoebe Howell of Southampton, New York. As a child Maltby Gelston worked on his father’s farm, presumably turning his hand at all-things agrarian. At the age of nineteen, after what he later recalled as “prayerful deliberation” and admittedly against his father’s wishes—having had desired “to retain his son on the paternal farm, to be the prop and solace of his declining years”—Gelston enrolled at what was then, Yale College. He graduated from Yale with honors in 1791, during the presidential tenure of the famous Edwardsian-antagonist, Ezra Stiles (1727–95).

Immediately following graduation, Gelston began a three-year period of study in practical theology, under the private tutelage of Dr Jonathan Edwards Jr (1745–1801), as was something of a common practice of the period for men seeking the pastorate.6 It was during this three-year period that Gelston composed his Systematic Collection.7 According to Harrison—Gelston’s longtime friend and eulogizer—during the course of his study with Edwards Jr, Gelston “made a public profession of religion” before the Presbyterian Church of Jamaica, Long Island, where he remained an active member until 1794—the same year he apparently completed his Systematic Collection. On August 1, 1792, he became the first tutor of Union Hall Academy, not far from his church.

Just two years later, on June 3, 1794, Gelston was ordained to preach by the New Haven Congregational Association in Milford, Connecticut; an appointment he had been apparently seeking for some time. He preached before congregations at West Granville, Massachusetts, and Roxbury, Connecticut and West Rupert, Vermont, before he arrived in small township of Sherman, Connecticut in the fall of 1796, following a brief period of declining health.8 Though they (the church in Sherman) were in “a low and divided state, [and] containing only twenty members,” Gelston was gladly installed as minister to the Sherman Congregational church for “100 (GBP) and a few cords of firewood” per annum on April 26, 1797. Interestingly, Sherman’s historical society records show that the vote to call Gelston occurred in the early part of January that same year. More interesting still is that amongst the eighteen individuals who registered to vote in this ecclesiastical proceeding of the “New Fairfield North Society,” the final name to appear on the record is none other than Jonathan Edwards, D.D. The society’s decision to call Gelston into “gospel ministry” was nearly unanimous.9 Two months following the decision to install him as minister—something formalized the following month—Gelston composed two letters to “The people of the North Society, in New Fairfield.” In the first, Gelston clarifies some of the details of the people’s expectations upon him. The following is a portion of the letter from March 14, 1797:

Gentlemen,

In all the transactions of a public nature, especially where the interest of religion is concerned, a clear and determinate understanding of each other is doubtless esteemed highly important. On this ground, I would beg leave to request some explanation of one article in the Call, with which you have honored me. The article, to which I refer, is the fifth. On this, one inquiry which arises is; whether in the case of death, the whole of the proposed settlement, or if death take place with a period less than three years from the time of settlement, the whole of what shall be received or may justly have been expected, previous to death, will not be considered as free from the terms of refunding? Another [inquiry], whether in the case of separation, the terms of refunding will not be relinquished, if you Minister, by a council mutually chosen, should be adjudged free from being the blameable cause of the separation?

In the second letter to the “North Society,” signalling the council’s agreeableness with his previous inquiries, Gelston addresses them no longer as “Gentlemen,” but as ‘Brethren’ and salutes them with “Sentiments of Affection,” rather than “Sentiments of Esteem.” He writes,

Brethren,

You have thought proper to honor me with a Call, to settle among you in the work of the gospel ministry. It is an expression of friendship, and in its nature and consequences, highly important and interesting. In this view, it has been my endeavor, I trust, to take it into serious consideration; to seek counsel from the God of wisdom, and receive advice from men, in whose opinion and matured experience I have reason to place confidence. After man serious reflection on the subject, I feel ready to declare what, in my present view of things, appears t be duty. As duty ought to be the governing influence of our conduct, the appearance of it, from circumstances and prospects of usefulness, will be received, as are expressions of my feelings. Of your friendly Call, under present prospect, I profess a willingness with cordiality to accept. To my acceptance, I would add a sincere wish that you and myself may, in future, be governed by benevolence, that we may act, in all our proceedings with reference to our proposed union, from a real attachment to the general good; that we may walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep with unity of the Christ in the bond of peace.

With sentiments of affection,

Subscribes yours,

To serve in the gospel,

Maltby Gelston

New Fairfield. March 20, 1797.

Once elected, Gelston remained at the Sherman Congregation church, according to Harrison, as their “faithful and judicious servant” for the next forty-five years (and even beyond that as minister emeritus), until his death in 1856.

During Gelston’s tenure, 249 persons were added to the church and by all accounts he served as a devoted (and despite his portrait’s rather morose appearance) and cheerful minister. As a testimony to his devotion, Gelston left a cache of elegantly hand-written sermon manuscripts (nearly one thousand total),10 various personal correspondence letters, and the following poem that he composed for the church at some (presumably later) point during his ministry.

Crucifixion

The Son of man they did betray

He was condemned and led away

Think O my soul on that dread day

Look on Mount Calvary.

Behold him lamblike led along

Surrounded by a wicked throng

Accused by each lying tongue

And thus the lamb of God they hung

Upon the shameful tree.

T’was thus the glorious sufferer stood

With hand, and feet nailed to the wood

From every would astream of blood

Came flowing down amain.

His bitter groans all nature shook

And at his voice the rocks were broke.

The sleeping saints their graves forsook

While spiteful Jews around him mock

And laughed at his pain.

Now hung between the earth and skies

Behold in agony he dies

O sinners hear his mournful cries

Come see his torturing pain.

The morning sun with drop of light

Blushed and refused to view the sight

The azure clothed in robes of night

All nature mourned and stood afright

When Christ the Lord was slain.

Hark man and angels hear the Son

He cries for help but O there’s none

He treads the wine press all alone

His garments stained with blood.

In lamentations hear him cry

Eloi lama sabachthani.

Though death may close his languid eyes

He soon will mount the upper skies

The conquering Son of God!

The Jews and Romans in a land

With hearts like steel around him stand

And mocking say ‘Come save the land

Come try yourself to free.’

A soldier pierced him when he died

Then healing streams came from his side

And thus my lord was crucified

Stern justice now is satisfied,

Sinners for you and me.

Behold he mounts the throne of state

He fills the mediatorial seat

While millions lowing at his feet

With loud hosannas tell.

Though he endured exquisite pain

He led the monster death in chains

Ye seraphs raise your loudest strains

With music fell bright Eden’s plains

He conquered death and Hell.

‘Tis done the dreadful debt is plain

The great atonement now is made

Sinners on him your guilt was laid

For you he spilt his blood.

For you his tender soul did move

For you he left the courts above

That you the length and breadth might prove

And height of depth of perfect love

In Christ your smiling God.

All glory be to God on high

Who reigns enthroned above the sky

Who sent his Son to bleed and die

Glory to him be given

While heaven above his praised resound

O Zion sing his grace abounds

I hope to shout eternal sounds

In flaming love that knows no bounds

When swallowed up in heaven.11

Beyond these few historical facts and the testimony to the effectual ministration of his church duties, there is little extent biographical material about Gelston and even less about his time under the instruction of Edwards Jr. This is somewhat problematic at one level. For, we want to be careful not to read Gelston’s Systematic Collection too far afield from the historical context wherein it was composed. With that in mind, and as there is so scant a record of Gelston’s life at the time, his particular place in and value to the New England theological tradition has (for our purposes) a great deal more to do with the particular answers that his Systematic Collection supplies us with than it does with the circumstances of its composition. For this reason, let us briefly and more broadly consider the occasion of his composition, after which we will turn our attention to the significance of its content, paying particular attention to what it says about the nature of the atonement.

The occasion for which Gelston’s wrote his Systematic Collection appears to be in keeping with those activities common to the early New England ministerial tradition, sometimes referred to as the “parsonage seminary.” It was commonplace for college educated ministerial candidates, like Gelston, to receive the bulk of their practical instruction from an established local minister. In the case of Gelston, such instruction came from his time with the younger Edwards—a coveted arrangement to be sure. For, after President Edwards’ death in 1758, scores of ministerial candidates (again, principally from Yale College), including John Smalley (1734–1820), Jonathan Edwards Jr (1745–1801), Aaron Burr Jr (1756–1836), looked to Edwards Sr’s closest disciples for their private practical-theological education in the New England way.12

This post-graduate education, as it were, in most cases involved various (and sometimes voluminous) assigned readings (especially where a minister, like Joseph Bellamy, for example, possessed such a well-stocked personal library), the regular composition and delivery of sermons from that minster’s “desk” (i.e., pulpit), and of chief interest here, the student’s task of answering a sort of Edwardsian-specific, catechetically-structured lists of theological questions.13 The first of these lists to appear was composed by President Edwards himself and was later developed and supplemented (exponentially) by his son, Dr. Edwards. One such list consisted of ninety questions that Edwards Jr expanded to a forbidding 313 questions. Not all of Edwards Jr’s ministerial trainees were assigned the take of answering all 313 questions. The number of questions assigned to a candidate perhaps hinged on the degree to which Edwards Jr perceived to be the needs of each individual under his instruction. For what reason we do not know, but in the case of Gelston, all of them were assigned. The intent of this otherwise rigorous ministerial education was apparently both to prepare younger, inexperienced ministers with the demands that would be upon them by their various (socially and economically diverse) congregations and, perhaps more so, to fortify the future of the New England congregational tradition with Edwardsian ideals, the erosion of which had begun no sooner than with the loss of President Edwards himself.

Gambrell’s careful study of eighteenth-century ministerial training in New England makes it clear that the disciple who seemed to have most aggressively taken up (and certainly developed) Edwards’ educational model was Joseph Bellamy.14 From the late 1750s up until his death in 1790, Bellamy undertook the private ministerial education of over sixty candidate ministers. Following the outline of his own famous True Religion Delineated,15 Bellamy imbibed his students with a sort of Calvinistically-bent moral philosophy; on one occasion, explicitly entreating them, “to preach a morally reasoned Calvinism.”16

Bellamy’s “school of prophets,” as it became known, was arguably the most significant development in the Edwardsian intellectual tradition until Nathaniel William Taylor (1786–1858) and his so-called “New Haven Theology.”17 So pervasive was Bellamy’s influence on the subsequent generations of Edwardsians, that it is more likely the case that those who would eventually claim President Edwards as their theological patriarch were more indebted to Bellamy for their theological peculiarities than they were indebted to Edwards.18 This is perhaps no more evident than by an examination of the continuities and discontinuities that persisted between Edwards, Bellamy, and their successors on doctrine of the atonement—hence our interest in a case study of atonement in Gelston and Jonathan Edwards Jr.19

For Bellamy’s part, he argued that sin was an infinite insult to God’s benevolence and the moral law that reflected it.20 Thus, Christ’s death for sinners was not intended to absolve them of their individual debts to a wrathful God. Rather, it publicly satisfied the unmet demands of the moral law, thereby restoring dignity and honor to a benevolent and merciful God.21 This emphasis is what has traditionally signaled the supposed point of theological departure for Edwards’ successors. For, consequent to such a theological alterations (amongst others)—that Christ satisfied the legal demands of the moral law for everyone—it has been long believed that Bellamy (and those after him) ultimately rejected such fundamental Calvinistic ideas as the doctrine of limited atonement.22 Accordingly, Bellamy regarded these and other innovations in his moral governmental theology as the surest means to fortifying Calvinist thought in familial, ecclesial, and civic life throughout New England. Ironically, rather than warding off the liberalizing tendencies in New England’s theology at the time, Bellamy’s innovations, and in particular those developments he made to his doctrine of the atonement, have since been used to show New England theologies eventual undoing.23

While Bellamy was perhaps the most prodigious producer of second-generation Edwardsians, Hopkins and Edwards Jr certainly played their parts in carrying on the tradition.24 Hopkins—President Edwards’ first biographer and proud purveyor the now famous notion of “Disinterested Benevolence”25—like Bellamy, was for a time mentor to Edwards Jr. In fact, it is in all likelihood that Hopkins, whose eventual attempt at the systematization of Edwardsianism (and who had been entrusted by Sarah Edwards with the bulk of her husbands manuscripts), most effectively imbibed Edwards Jr with the catechetical model of instruction that he so effectively carried forward in his own ministerial mentorship.26 This is especially evident in his mentorship of Gelston. For, as we have already mentioned, during Gelston’s three-year period of instruction he was assigned not a portion, but all 313 theological questions that Edwards Jr had compiled. This is part of the reason for Gelston’s contemporary significance. Evidence suggests that he was the only one of Edwards Jr’s students to have labored in tackling all 313 questions with full and detailed answers, thus making his Systematic Collection particularly valuable, in comparison to other (mostly partial) lists of answers that other sources might provide. Interestingly, Gelston appears to have spent the bulk of these three years composing his answers in New York while serving as a sort of interim minister himself, rather than in Edwards Jr’s home, as was so often the custom for many parsonage seminaries of the time. Besides his being assigned the colossal task of answering all 313 questions, there are few details that are known about Gelston’s particular interaction with his mentor. Perhaps Dr. Edwards’ having registered to vote his former pupil into the Sherman church indicates the endurance of their relational interaction and closeness. That no extant personal correspondence—like that which Edwards Sr enjoyed from his friends Hopkins and Bellamy—between Gelston and Edwards Jr remains to seems to invalidate the idea of any perpetual closeness between the two. Toward the end of his life, however, Gelston intimated to Harrison his “high regard” for Dr. Edwards and his theology. Gelston also indicated to him, sounding much like President Edwards, that,

He read three human systems of theology and one divine; that after reading the former he was in doubt which to follow, when he determined to read the latter, which he did from beginning to end with pen in hand. After this, when a new question of doctrine arose, he went, not to [Samuel] Hopkins, Ridgeley, or [President] Edwards, to see what they said, but to the Word of God, to see how it compared with that.27

Such praise bespeaks not only a respect for the tradition that Gelston no doubt, self-consciously conscripted himself to under Edwards Jr. It also suggests the theological endurance of the early doctrinal summaries that make up his Systematic Collection. For this reason, despite the lack of further, more intimate, details about his life, Gelston’s significance for our better understanding the development of the New England theological tradition is beyond question. Let us now turn our attention to the developments surrounding the doctrine of atonement in early New England Theology.

II. New England Dogmatics? A Case Study of the Atonement

There are a variety of ways we might consider and weigh the significance of Gelston’s Systematic Collection. One particularly fruitful possibility is to treat Gelston’s work as a principal resource in the following case study. To this end, in what remains of this introduction, we present a brief case study of the doctrine of atonement and its development amongst the New England theologians. This will be less of an exercise in historical theology, and more of a systematic theological inquiry. That is, our interest in Gelston’s Systematic Collection has primarily to do with whether it might cast any new theological light on a recently rekindled discussion of the atonement in Edwards and his successors.

For those acquainted with New England religious historiography proximate to the theological legacy of Jonathan Edwards, the phrase “New England dogmatics” might sound like something of a contradiction. For, there may well be no other Protestant theological tradition that, having emerged from a single source, had so quickly and so erratically developed, and had yet come to such a sudden and still curious end. This is precisely what makes the ensuing proposal so interesting. For, there is more to the story that is significant to warrant contemporary attention than has traditionally been believed. In this way, we are not suggesting that Gelston’s Systematic Collection somehow provides justification for our re-visioning the development of New England theology as a whole. Our proposal is far more modest. With this editors’ introduction we want to join a growing number of scholars in etching away at the still fairly entrenched historical narrative of so-called “decline and fall”28 that still characterizes the trajectory of Edwards’ thinking amongst his successors—something that has traditionally had a great deal to do with the doctrine of atonement.29 In this way, the difference between our proposal here and the recent revisionist proposals about the doctrine of atonement in Edwards and his successors in contemporary literature amounts to simple difference in the angle from which we are looking, and Gelston’s Systematic Collection provides just such a vantage.

With all this in mind, the remainder of this introduction unfolds in three parts to a conclusion. Following a brief sketch of President Edwards on the penal substitutionary nature of the atonement—a way of demarcating the theological landscape, as it were, with which we are principally concerned—in the first part we lay out a sort of synthetic account of the so-called moral government model of atonement that has traditionally characterized Edwards’ successors. Then, in part two, we consider a recent account of Jonathan Edwards Jr’s moral government model offered up by Oliver Crisp. In the part three, we lay out evidence that suggests that Edwards Jr’s model of what Crisp calls “Penal Non-Substitution” is doctrinally “thicker” than Crisp suggests. We then pivot to a discussion of the dozen or so questions and answers about the atonement that Gelston’s Systematic Collection offers and consider how his answers to these questions bear upon our understanding of the atonement as it developed in New England around the time of the American Revolution. Here too, as with Edwards J., we will see evidence that some version of the doctrine of penal substitution, though diminished in part, remains a piece of the doctrinal furniture of this second generation Edwardsian. Let us turn now and briefly consider President Edwards on the atonement after which we layout our synthetic approach to the moral government model of atonement.

II.1. Atonement and the Moral Government of God

Until recently, and for more than a century, scholars have maintained that President Edwards’ musings about the atonement gave rise to a form of the moral government theory of the atonement that his successors embraced and developed, (roughly) according to which Christ dies in order to satisfy the rectoral rather than the retributive demands of God’s moral law.30 In this way, Christ performs the work of a penal example, whereby he vindicates God’s moral law and government without vicariously substituting himself for particular individuals, as in the case of penal substitution. Christ thus satisfies the legal demands of the moral law for everyone, not as a means of releasing them from their individual and particular debts to divine retribution. Rather, Christ dies to satisfy the unmet demands of the moral law, which in turn restores dignity or honor to God—the lawmaker.

This atonement narrative has seemingly reached a point of argumentative entropy in the literature, what with evidence that has more recently been held out that recommends President Edwards’ subscription to a version of the penal substitution theory of atonement. On this theory, Christ willingly assumes the legal responsibility for the sin(s) of human beings and by his substitutionary death pays their debt of punishment in order to satisfy God’s retributive rather than his rectoral justice.31 The recent suggestion that the so-called Northampton Sage may in fact have articulated such a doctrine has in part motivated a set of serious inquests into his successor’s doctrinal formulations, the most serious of which have been put forward in two articles by Oliver Crisp.32 In the first, Crisp directs his attention to Bellamy’s doctrine of atonement and convincingly recasts the “decline-and-fall narrative” as a story of doctrinal development—a move that has motivated much of the ensuing analysis. In the second article, Crisp offers up a thoroughgoing and rigorously systematic analysis of Edwards Jr’s doctrine of atonement. Crisp’s analysis of Edwards Jr ultimately distances him from the possibility—if his father did hold to some version of the penal substitution theory—that he carried on this aspect of the Reformed theological tradition.

So in order to distinguish, better still, isolate Edwards Jr’s thinking about the moral government theory from his fellow Edwardsians, let us consider a sort of “core sample” of features of the New England version of the moral government theory.33 By core sample we mean a sort of collation of ideas about the atonement that developed during the first, second, and third generations of Edwards’ intellectual tradition. Such a survey will bring us close to the heart of our understanding what it means for New England theologians to have been harangued with a decline and fall narrative until recently. For the sake of brevity and clarity, we set out this core sample in the following series of numbered theses, interspersed with both primary source evidence and some explanatory comments. For a more detailed discussion of these some of these features, we direct our readers elsewhere.34 We begin with:

1) God is the moral governor of the universe.35

That is, God is the supreme authority over all creation, including his morally responsible creatures. God’s government is his power, according to which his infinite wisdom and unfathomable divine will are exercised over his creatures to direct them to their various appointed ends. God’s moral government describes his specific interaction with rational creatures. President Edwards himself had a robust doctrine of God’s moral government, commenting,

Hereby it becomes manifest, that God’s moral government over mankind, his treating them as moral agents, making them the objects of his commands, counsels, calls, warnings, expostulations, promises, threatenings, rewards and punishments, is not inconsistent with a determining disposal of all events, of every kind, throughout the universe, in his providence; either by positive efficiency or permission.36

This brings us to our second thesis:

2) God governs his rational creatures by instituting the moral law.37

For Edwards and his successors alike, the moral law is the means by which God displays the righteousness of his self-love, makes his moral perfection and holiness comprehensible to the creature, and threatens those who despise his general benevolence toward and authority over his rational creatures.38 Again, consider Edwards, who writes:

The chief and most fundamental of all the commands of the moral law requires us “to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls, with all our strength, and all our mind”: that is plainly, with all that is within us, or to the utmost capacity of our nature: all that belongs to, or is comprehended within the utmost extent or capacity of our heart and soul, and mind and strength, is required. God is in himself worthy of infinitely greater love, than any creature can exercise towards him: he is worthy of love equal to his perfections, which are infinite: God loves himself with no greater love than he is worthy of when he loves himself infinitely: but we can give God no more than we have.39

By including references to President Edwards amongst these number theses we are intentionally trying to draw attention to the fact that are indeed doctrinal continuities regarding the moral government of God that are rightly labelled “Edwardsian.” Given this, the following thesis is a fairly critical distinction that Edwards’ successor made with some frequency is arguably the principal point of theological departure of the Edwardsians from their mentor.

3) God’s moral government is revoked by sin, which, strictly speaking, is an offence against the moral law, not God.

By making the moral law the measure of sin’s offence and thus ensuring that the problem that the atonement solves is a punitive one—an offence that requires the satisfaction of God’s retributive justice—they end up supplanting the idea that Christ’s work is in any way a substitutionary act.40 Edwards Amasa Park explains:

Our Lord suffered pains, which were substituted for the penalty of the law, and may be called punishment in the more general sense of the word, but were not strictly and literally the penalty which the law had threatened. . . . The humiliation, pains, and death of our redeemer were equivalent in meaning to the punishment threatened in the moral law, and thus they satisfied Him who is determined to maintain the honor of this law, but they did not satisfy the demands of the law itself for our punishment. . . . The active obedience [of Christ], viewed as the holiness of Christ was honorable to the law, but was not a work of supererogation, performed by our Substitute, and then transferred and imputed to us, so as to satisfy the requisitions of the law for our own active obedience.41

This brings us to our fourth thesis:

4) Sin requires atonement in order to satisfy the penal consequences of retributive justice, which rectoral justice demands by the moral law.42

This too is quite an important point of distinction. For where penal substitution demands that the offender suffer a penalty, rectoral justice has clear penal implications and Christ must suffer these implications in order to restore the honor that is due God’s moral law; the difference here being that Christ suffers this penal as an example, not as a substitute for any individual. And this leads us to our final thesis:

5) Christ makes atonement, not as a penal substitute but as a penal example, making it possible for God to forgive sin.43

In other words, Christ’s death for sinners was never intended to absolve them from their individual debts of punishment to God. Rather, Christ’s death publicly satisfied sins impunities against the moral law, making the forgiveness of the sins of individuals possible.44

Now, insofar as these five thesis reflect a core sample of those ideas expressed by Edwardsians on the moral government, we can make three summary observations that puts initially seems to put greater theological distance between Edwards and his successors on the matter of the atonement. We shall limit ourselves to just three brief observations in order to bring sufficient shape to the foregoing theses, and to set up our discussion of Crisp’s penal non-substitution.

First, we note that for Edwards and his successors alike, the atonement is a distinctly punitive matter. The precise reason for which Christ absorbs this penalty is, however, a question for which Edwards and his successors have markedly different answers. For Edwards, and his doctrine of penal substitution, Christ absorbs the penalty for the sin(s) of particular individuals through his vicarious suffering and death. For later Edwardsians, such as Bellamy or Hopkins or Park, and more specifically for Edwards Jr, the penalty that Christ absorbs is not person-specific, that is, Christ does not die for any particular person(s).45 Second, we observe that for Edwards, Christ’s death is directed primarily toward satisfying God’s retributive justice. For his successors, on the other hand, it is principally rectoral justice for which Christ dies, not the rectoral justice that God requires, but that required by his moral law. Herein lies the apparent mechanism of the Edwardsian doctrine of atonement, which is our third observation. For the Edwardsians, sin appears to be an offence against the moral law, not God. This is perhaps the sharpest distinction between Edwards and his successors. A detailed account of this distinction is something that requires further consideration and is beyond the scope of our purposes here. It is a problem that certainly has more than one explanation. There are three things we ought to understand about this distinction. According to the Edwardsians: 1) God can somehow be entirely insulated from direct insult(s) to his nature; 2) God is chiefly concerned with rectoral rather than retributive justice; and 3) atonement requires that Christ dies as a penal example rather than a penal substitute. With all this in mind, having now a birds-eye-view of what is at stake for the New England moral government model, we transition to Crisp’s account of Jonathan Edwards Jr’s doctrine of Penal Non-Substitution.

II.2. Crisp, Edwards Jr, and Penal Non-Substitution

According to Crisp, Edwards Jr puts forward a fairly robust model of atonement that deserves the attention of contemporary scholarship, not least for which, its having developed (though often unnoticed and certainly under appreciated) at such a unique period and place in the history of theology. In order to re-invigorate this otherwise diminished model, Crisp exposits the theory for contemporary analysis. Interestingly, in as much as Crisp’s efforts to retrieve Edwards Jr’s model for analysis, it is Crisp’s analysis of Edward Jr that deserves further consideration. For, a wider look at Edwards Jr’s works points both to his development of Crisp’s so-called penal non-substitution model, and rather curiously, what appears to be a version of the doctrine of penal substitution model of atonement. Our engagement with Crisp’s work serves the purpose of showing that the New England model of atonement is perhaps more complex or “thicker” (to borrow a term from Crisp) than Crisp’s account boasts. Indeed, there is far more that is of profitable interest in the literature of the Edwardsians than is often recognized in contemporary theology, especially as it relates to the atonement, divine honor, divine justice, the moral law, and legal debts. Let us begin by considering Crisp’s five components of Edwards Jr’s theory of atonement:

A—Necessity of Atonement

Crisp begins by unpacking a common assumption of moral government theories, namely that they do not necessitate the atonement. According to Crisp, the Edwardsian version of the governmental model does in fact necessarily requires the atonement. Drawing recourses from Francis Turretin, Crisp explains the fine-grained distinction between to types of necessity: hypothetical necessity and absolute necessity. On hypothetical necessity, the atonement is, first, merely the most fitting way for to solve the problem of humanities sin against God, and, second, it is contingent on other divinely ordained features of redemption.46 On absolute necessity, divine retribution is not necessary for penal non-substitution. According to Crisp, “Defenders of penal non-substitution regard the atonement as a means of vindicating the moral law and government of God, rather than as a means to satisfying divine retributive justice.”47 This leads Crisp to the conclusion that Edwards Jr’s model could be developed according to either form of necessity.

It is true that the Grotian version of the moral government theory implicitly rejects an absolute necessity concerning punishment. Accordingly, rectoral justice is independent from retributive justice (where God’s justice is penal in nature rather than his right governing of the moral order through the moral law). In this way, God’s righteous governance of the world is primary in terms of his justice, and his retributive justice could be deferred. This is not to say that God would not also be just in his act of retribution, this act is not necessary—if he so deems. In a similar fashion, the Edwardsian theory can articulate the logic of the atonement, as fundamentally depending upon either atonement made for governing the world or retribution. The Edwardsian theory depends upon an absolute necessity in this sense. Accordingly, a contemporary defender of penal non-substitution can supply a rationale for God’s ongoing governance of the world through Christ’s act as a penal non-substitute. Human sin is acquitted, individually, based on the human response to the benefits made in Christ’s act. However, as stated above, the theory could retrieve from the early nineteenth century Methodist theologian, John Miley, a hypothetically necessary atonement because it seems peculiar that God could not bring about atonement in another way in any possible world. Crisp summarizes what is at stake for the necessity of the atonement in three parts. First, “Atonement was necessary for the salvation of some number of fallen human beings.” Second, as “Some act of atonement was necessary for the salvation of some number of fallen human beings.” Third and finally, as “A particular act of atonement was necessary for the salvation of some number of fallen human beings.”48 On a hypothetical necessity understanding of penal non-substitution, atonement becomes necessary based on God’s ordination to save the “elect” and to provide the atonement by one particular means—Christ’s act on the cross. Thus, the atonement is neither random nor is it based on the divine will alone.49

Again, what we aim to show next is that not only did Edwards Jr (also represented in the tradition he inspired—Gelston) affirm penal non-substitution, but penal substitution with some elements of the governmental theory. Accordingly, we will see that retribution is fundamental for penal substitution and that rectoral justice is dependent upon it—retribution is necessary for the moral government of the world and God’s moral government fits into his providential control. And with this we transition into Crisp’s discussion of:

B—Divine will, moral law, and atonement

There appears to be a deeper problem with the moral government theory of atonement. The problem seems to amount to the notion that God is supremely free to save in the manner he chooses. This means that laws are always contingent upon divine arbitration—laws are mutable, and are not internal to God’s nature—and as such not binding on God in any way. Some would call this “legal voluntarism” where the moral law(s) are rooted in an act of God’s will alone. The contemporary defender of legal voluntarism can avert the challenge in two ways. First, he can defend a modified voluntarism. On a modified voluntarism, the moral law is based upon the divine will, this is true, but the divine will is somehow always reflecting of the divine nature in the human context. In this way, if God’s moral law is primarily rectoral in nature, and this somehow reflects his nature, then it is perfectly within his right and just to relax the punitive consequences of the law, once again, so long as God has made right the moral order in which humans find themselves. The moral law, in some sense, then, is binding on God, once it is set in motion, because it reflects his nature and is contingent up what has already been divinely determined about the moral order in which he has created humans. In a similar way, a defender of penal non-substitution could affirm a non-voluntaristic doctrine of the moral law. By claiming that the law is not primarily based in divine volition, but that the law is an extension of the divine character where God must act in such a way as to satisfy the highest law—the goodness of the eternal law.50

The questions that most concern us here is the necessity and nature of divine justice and, more than that, the divine motivation as they relate to the moral law and human transformation. These important distinctions are fundamental to both New England theology and contemporary models of justice and the atonement. For, the apparent de-coupling the rectoral and retributive justice in the thought Edwards Jr is a crucial aspect for our understanding the Edwardsian doctrine of atonement. However, we understand Gelston and the Edwardsian tradition to affirm a penal substitution of a modified sort. What we mean by this is not that rectoral justice is fundamental, in a non-voluntarist or voluntarist sense, but that retributive justice is fundamental to God’s moral governing of the world (within God’s providence). So, Christ as a penal substitute becomes central in God’s governance of human beings. Another question we raise, is whether rectoral justice or retributive justice are fundamentally a payment made to the moral law or is it a payment made to God himself? By differentiating within New England dogmatics, the atonement options are expanded for contemporary discussions. Rather provocatively, we think that within these discussions the atonement theories are a more complex, with several new vignettes than may have been thought to this point. For it seems that there are at least three models of the atonement at work in the Edwardsian tradition that have relevance to contemporary atonement. Let us move on to Crisp’s next point.

C—Sin and Its Penal Consequences

The third component of the moral government model or penal non-substitution concerns the nature of sin and its penal consequences. Both penal substitution and penal non-substitution affirm that there is some debt of punishment required for re-establishing the sin-fractured relationship between God and humanity. Both Grotian and Edwardsian variants of the moral government model involve maintain that sin requires a penalty—“non-transferable” penalty. This is because guilt is not transferable either between humans or between divine-human and other humans. Penal substitution on the other hand, says that the penal consequence of a guilty sinner is transferable. Herein lies the mechanism of the atonement—the consequences from human sin are transferred to Christ and Christ pays the debt of punishment for those sinners (of the world or the elect). Distinctively, what is required is not a debt of punishment on penal non-substitutionary atonement, but a penal equivalent to satisfy the demands of the moral law. Atonement, then, is construed more communally in virtue of God’s means of governing the world. An actual, individual payment to God for sins committed is thus not required. Instead, a “suitable equivalent” must pay the penalty for the disorder in God’s moral order where humans have failed to honor God’s means of governance. There is an imbalance in the force or the moral order hindering the means by which God has chosen to providentially orchestrate the world toward its proper end. Christ, then, brings about balance by paying the penalty as a “suitable equivalent.”51

Several important questions emerge from this discussion that concern the relation between Christ and the moral law, and, for that matter, the relation the moral law has to the divine nature or the eternal law. We are led to think, contra Crisp, that Edwards Jr affirmed a variant of penal substitution where Christ’s act of atonement brought about balance in God’s moral order by transferring the penal consequences of human sin to himself on the cross. Below we signal some important data from Gelston that might be suggestive in this direction. The contemporary questions deserving attention that follow from this such a discussion include some of the following: Does Christ make a payment to the moral law, to God himself or to both in some sense? Is a non-transferable payment made sufficient for human atonement for sin? In what sense is Christ’s payment truly penal in nature? Are there other options available like the possibility that Christ pay a penal payment to the law that somehow multiply repeatable rather than a discrete penal payment made individually?

D—The Solutio Tantidem

In the fourth part of Crisp’s account of Dr. Edwards’ penal non-substitution model, he offers some explanation of the concept of the so-called “suitable equivalence” of Christ’s sacrifice. It is in this part where we can see what is perhaps the most significant difference between the Northampton Sage and his son. Suitable equivalence has to do with several tightly woven together concepts. Crisp fixes on two concepts in particular. First, whether the death of Christ is of a sufficient weight, as it were, to tip the scales on the penal demands of the moral law. Or put differently, whether Christ’s death can be treated “as if it were the moral equivalent to the sin of humanity.”52 Second, whether or not the problems of (and therefore the solutions to) the retributive and rectoral demands of divine justice can be individuated one from the other. Upon reviewing the several explicit comments about the suitable equivalence of Christ’s made by some of those later New England theologians, Crisp argues that on penal non-substitution, “Christ’s suffering on the cross was not a species of penal substitution.”53 This, as the comments clearly show, is because while Christ was thought to have suffered a penalty of some sort, he suffered it specifically to meet the demands of the moral law, not as a substitute for individual persons. Crisp is careful to note, against several recent accounts of penal non-substitution, that for Dr. Edwards, Christ’s work remained an objective, though not supererogatory act.

E—Suitable Equivalent and Acceptation

In a related point, Crisp thoughtfully goes on to show how Edwards Jr considers that Christ could in fact have suffered less than he actually did suffer and still have offset the penal demands for human transgressions against the moral law has some interesting links to the medieval doctrine of “acceptation.” Here, Crisp distinguishes between what he aptly refers to as a “thin” versus a “thick” doctrine of Christ’s equivalent suffering for sin. “Thin,” because the accumulated penal consequence(s) of human suffering may in fact not have required a corresponding infinite equivalent to offset their demands; something he says is likely not the case for Edwards Jr. “Thick” because, alternatively, it may be the case (and likely is for Edwards Jr) that because sins against a being of infinite value require an infinite punishment, that the only suitable equivalent for such offenses much be of corresponding infinite value, and thus offered up by an infinite person, namely Christ. Following his assignment of this latter account to Edwards Jr, Crisp further discriminates between what he calls a “thicker” and a “plain thick” version of the “thick” view of the equivalence of Christ’s suffering. According to “thicker” version, Crisp describes Edwards Jr’s assertion that “any amount of suffering endured by Christ is of a qualitatively different nature to any suffering that might be endured by someone who is merely human”; something he says of Edwards Jr is “counterintuitive.”54 The “plain thick” view, to the contrary, Crisp claims avoids the fallout that seems to be entailed by the “thicker” view, which says that Christ’s hitting his thumb with a hammer, as it were, is an infinite suffering like his death on the cross appears to be. Crisp shows that Edwards Jr’s consideration of supposed thickness of Christ’s equivalent suffering is not discordant with his earlier assertions regarding Edwards Jr’s thinking about the necessity of the atonement.

Crisp is altogether correct to claim that the son of the Northampton Sage contributed a great deal more to the development of the New England theological tradition than he is often credited with.55 The preceding should no doubt make this point clearly. His account of Edwards Jr’s doctrine of penal non-substitution is thoroughgoing and convincing. It is, however, not without its own vulnerability. For there is evidence that suggests that Crisp’s account of Edwards Jr’s thinking about atonement is itself “thicker” than we have been lead to believe. Upon this suggestion we transition to consider several important comments that Edwards Jr makes about the atonement that lend support to the idea that he had a place in his thinking for the penal substitution model after all. By considering these comments, we are not interested so much in how to reconcile this anomaly. It is enough for us, as we move on to Gelston, to point it out in hopes of provoking more systematic-theological research into this century-long debate. Let us turn now our attention to two important sources in Edwards Jr’s works.

II.3. A “Thicker” Reading of Edwards Jr on Atonement

Of the variety of theological writings that offer some additionally detailed insight into the development of his father’s legacy regarding the atonement, there are two works in particular that shed some help light on Edwards Jr’s thoughts about the work of Christ. It is here where we shall see that Crisp’s account of Dr. Edwards’ model of atonement is itself “thicker” than Crisp makes it out to be. The first work to shed more light on this matter is his Thoughts on the Atonement, echoes of which appear in a second piece by Edwards Jr, called “Remarks on the Improvements Made in Theology by His Father, President Edwards.” In both cases, the younger Edwards makes several curious statements that point in the direction of his ascent to something along the lines of a penal substitution model of atonement. Let us consider a few such statements from the good Doctor’s works, and then consider their significance to the larger account of his doctrine of atonement, after which we will turn out attention to Gelston. Dr. Edwards writes,

By atonement, I mean something done or suffered, which, to the purpose of supporting the honor and dignity of the divine law and government, shall be equivalent to the punishment of the sinner according to law. Therefore, the atonement made by Christ implies his substitution in the stead of the sinner, who is to be saved by him; or that he suffered that in the sinner’s stead, which as effectually tended to discourage, or prevent transgression, and excite to obedience, as the punishment of the transgressor himself, according to the letter of the law would have done.56

In another place he maintains,

The atonement is the substitute for the punishment threatened in the law; and was designed to answer the same ends of supporting the authority of the law, the dignity of the divine moral government, and the consistency of the divine conduct in legislation and execution. By the atonement it appears that God is determined that his law shall be supported; that it shall not be despised or transgressed with impunity; and that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God. The very idea of an atonement or satisfaction for sin, is something which, to the purposes of supporting the authority of the divine law, the dignity and consistency of the divine government, is equivalent to the punishment of the sinner, according to the literal threatening of the law.57

From these statements, it is clear that the idea of substitution goes hand in hand with the legal/penal aspect of the atonement in the way Edwards Jr thinks about Christ’s work. The question for us is how Dr. Edwards can affirm both something that sounds quite like penal substitution and at the same time, the penal non-substitution model that Crisp labors (convincingly) to illumine. Part of the answer to this question has to do with the way that President Edwards and his son make sense of two aspects of the atonement. First, the nature of owing a debt versus owing a debt of punishment. Second, the direction of sins offense—whether it be an offense directed toward God or his moral law or both. So, before we turn our attention to Gelston’s account of atonement, let us briefly consider these two aspects, as they appear first in President Edwards’ works and then in the works of Edwards Jr.

II.3.1 Debts and Debts of Punishment

Penal substitution invites some of its greatest criticisms from the idea that Christ’s death is equivalent to his absorbing the penalty for the sin of humanity. Or to put it differently, that the work of Christ is a payment of humanity’s debt of punishment. This is quite a subtle and nevertheless critically important distinction from Christ’s work being construed as payment for a debt simpliciter. Not understanding the difference between the nature of a simple debt and a debt of punishment is to miss the substance of penal substitution altogether. And the difference is this: to owe God a debt of punishment is to owe a debt specifically for an offence that requires humanity (the debtor) suffer loss by suffering a punishment equivalent to their offence(s).58 This is the work of Christ on the penal substitution model, namely, to suffer loss by paying humanity’s debt of punishment to God’s retributive justice. To owe God a debt of any other sort is to owe God for something that requires that God (the creditor) not suffer loss. The work of Christ in this light fits more than one model of atonement. And it is in this distinction—between debts and debts of punishment—where the tension in Edwards’ and his son’s account of divine justice and atonement appears. This tension has two parts. The first tension we will see by way of a contrast between what a debt demands and what a debt of punishment demands and we will see the second by understanding the direction, as it were, of sins offence.

First, notice that a debt of punishment requires that transgressors (or more accurately, Christ) suffer loss. In this way, the penal substitution model is surprisingly anthropocentric in terms of its chief goal, in that the problem facing sinners is not a matter of their failed effort to restore anything to God, so much as it is with his exacting a penalty from them (or again, Christ). President Edwards says as much about this sort of judicial demand in several places throughout his work. For example, he argues that,

God declares that those sinners that are not forgiven shall pay the uttermost farthing, and the last mite, and that all the debt [of punishment] shall be exacted of them, etc. Now it seems unreasonable to suppose that God, in case of a surety, and his insisting on an atonement made by him, that he will show mercy by releasing the surety without a full atonement, anymore than that he will release it to the sinner that is punished, by not insisting on the complete punishment.59

In other words, in the same way that the full punitive demands of God’s retributive justice are to be exacted from sinners, Edwards says that they are exacted from Christ and this, because he is their representative and God should require no less from him despite his status as a divine person.60 Notice that Edwards says nothing in this context of what Christ’s work does positively, that is, positively for God. This is because restoring anything to God is not a problem that the penal substitution model endeavors to solve. Interestingly, in another place, Edwards argues that restoring to God the honor that is due him is precisely the work Christ undertook in making atonement, saying,

The sacrifice of Christ is a sweet savor, [first], because as such it was a great honor done to God’s majesty, holiness and law, and a glorious expression and testimony of Christ’s respect to that majesty etc.; that when he loved man and so greatly desired his salvation, he had yet so great respect to that majesty and holiness of God, that he had rather die than that salvation should be any injury or dishonor unto those attributes. And then secondly, it was a sweet savour, as it was a marvellous act of obedience, and so an expression of a wonderful respect to God’s authority. The value of Christ’s sacrifice was infinite, both as a propitiation and as an act of obedience; because he showed an infinite regard to the majesty, holiness, etc. of God, in being at infinite expense from regard to it. (See Nos. 451, 452).61

To make the distinction between owing a debt and a debt of punishment clear, consider the following analogy.

Imagine that you get a call one day from “Easy Eddy,” the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone’s bookkeeper. Eddy calls to talk to you about some massive unpaid debt that you owe Capone after losing a few hands of poker to Capone a few weeks ago.62 Eddy reminds you that you owe Capone a hundred-grand and that if you don’t pay up soon, the next call you’ll be getting will be a “house call,” from none other than Capone’s so-called “Enforcer,” Frank Nitti, and a few of his leg-breakers—only they won’t be breaking legs, they will be coming to finish you. Desperate to avoid a thrashing by Nitti-and-company, you quickly hang up on Eddy and phone your brother, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, who happens to be a close-confidante of the Capone family. After telling your brother what you’ve done and that you don’t have the money, he arranges a meeting with you and Capone to make a deal. To your great surprise and relief, in the meeting, your brother promises to pony-up the hundred-grand to pay your debt to Capone. The problem, however, is that having brokered the deal and bought your debt to Capone, your brother Guzik is now out a hundred-grand (provided he pays-up of course). What is interesting is that by discharging you of your debt to Capone, and assuming it himself, Guzik is now in a position to either forgive your debt to him outright and absorb the financial loss or exact the same sort of retribution from you, as would have Capone and company. Buying up your debt gives him that right. In this way, Guzik can either pay your debt or your debt of punishment.

Now, if we stop here we could cash out this analogy in terms of either a payment of a debt of punishment or payment of a debt. To owe Capone a debt—in this case, a debt of honor—means that he may neither lose money nor his honor and thus remains both vigilant and patient until these things are restored to him. To owe him a debt of punishment means that getting back the money means less to Capone than killing you, perhaps in order to show that he is not one to be trifled with and that he will inevitably and eventually settle all accounts of those offences against him.63

It is the Capone-like exaction of a debt of punishment that is precisely the problem that the death of Christ solves on the penal substitution model. God’s punitive action for offences against him is the actualization of his retributive justice. And according to exponents of penal substitution, it is the retributive demands of divine justice that Christ takes upon himself to meet for humanity’s sake. Divine retributive justice is that which God visits upon the unrighteous for sins against him.

For Edwards’ part, Christ is somehow depicted as paying both a debt simpliciter and a debt of punishment. For Christ to perform both of these works is a problem on several levels. But before we show how this is a potential problem—because it is so intimately bound up with the direction of sins offence—let us consider a second aspect of a debt of punishment.

II.3.2. Retribution and the Direction of Sins Offence

The second aspect of a debt of punishment that demands our attention here is the underlying assumption that sins offense is directed against God himself, and not, say, against his moral law. According to Edwards,

Sin is of such a nature that it wishes ill, and aims at ill, to God and men, but to God especially. It strikes at God; it would, if it could, procure his misery and death. It is but suitable that with what measure it meets, it should be measured to it again. ‘Tis but suitable that men should reap what they sow, and that the reward of every man’s hands should be given him.64

In this way, exponents of penal substitution make much of the fact that divine retribution for offenses against God are private legal affairs—that is, they are offenses against God himself by individual, morally responsible creatures, in contrast to say, a public offense, which is an offense against a society. Consider that if someone commits a crime against another, that person is liable for the offense and punishment will likely befall the offending party. The individual, who sins against God, so they argue, is thus justly liable to the punitive measures of God’s retributive justice as an individual. Such exponents also make much of the fact that private or individual offenses require individual reconciliation. This is, so they claim, what Christ does in making atonement, namely, effect personal, individual, and legal reconciliation between persons and God. That sins offense is against God and that it is something with individual implications is evident from the previous quotations. However, Edwards says elsewhere that,

‘tis requisite that sin should be punished, as punishment is deserved and just, therefore the justice of God obliges him to punish sin: for it belongs to God as the supreme Rector of the universality of things, to maintain order and decorum in his kingdom, and to see to it that decency and right takes place at all times, and in all cases. That perfection of his nature whereby he is disposed to this, is his justice; and therefore, his justice naturally disposes him to punish sin as it deserves. The holiness of God, which is the infinite opposition of his nature to sin, naturally and necessarily disposes him to punish sin.65

He then goes on to argue that,

God is to be considered in this affair not merely as the governor of the world of creatures, to order things between one creature and another, but as the supreme regulator or Rector of the universality of things, the orderer of things relating to the whole compass of existence, including himself, to maintain the rights of the whole, and decorum through the whole, and to maintain his own rights, and the due honor of his own perfections, as well as to keep justice among creatures. ‘Tis fit that there should be one that has this office, and the office properly belongs to the supreme being. And if he should fail of doing justice to him[self] in a needed vindication of his own majesty and glory, it would be an immensely greater failure of his rectoral justice than if he should deprive the creatures, that are beings of infinitely less consequence, of their rights.66

A close reading of these two statements alongside the one in the previous section reveals that these statements are actually incongruent. The problem here is that if penal offences are both criminal and punishable, they are not, strictly speaking, private or individual, so much as public or societal affairs that are punishable by the authority of a system of laws, not an individual lawmaker. In other words, a coherent picture of penal substitution seems to require that sins offence be levelled against the moral law and not God himself, and that this is a problem facing all persons collectively, not as individuals, as it is so often thought to be the case. For Edwards’ part, he seems to conflate the two.

It might be helpful to think of the difference between the offences that are tried in a United States district or civil court versus those tried in a United States criminal court. In a United States district court, someone might be sued, for example, for a breach of contract. Strictly speaking, this is not a criminal offense. This is a personal, (and therefore private) offense—one person versus another (even another individual group, as in a class action suit)—that is resolved by the offending party’s restoring or making reparation for the offended party. United States Criminal courts, by contrast, try criminal offenders. If someone is on trial for murder, say, that person’s offense is, again, strictly speaking, not against the one they killed (though I am sure we would all agree that murder is, if not the most, among the most egregious personal offenses that human persons can perpetrate against one another). Rather, their offense is against the laws of the society to which both parties have presumably assented and which demand that murderers pay a debt of punishment to society upon the commitment of such a crime. And in the United States judicial system, this debt is paid by incarceration or sometimes, in some states, death. In this way, murder, or any such criminal offense, is a public matter between the murderer and the society at large, not, strictly speaking, the murderer and the one that was murdered.67 To put it differently, there’s a difference between offenses against Capone himself and those levelled against the rules of his club.

Now, carrying this line of thinking over to the more recent suggestions of Edwards subscription to penal substitution, if Christ is said to pay a debt of punishment on behalf of others, then, the debt is actually not a private offense against God—like in a district court—requiring that something be restored (via reparation) to God, despite those claims of his being the privately offended party.68 To put it rather bluntly, nothing is restored to God on the penal substitution model. Instead, and quite to the contrary of the apparent demands of God’s retributive justice, penal substitution seems only to make provision for God to restore righteousness to humanity, leaving God dishonored and his Son, crushed (as the prophet Isaiah says) for this dishonor, and what is more, all of this being of no apparent benefit to himself. And this is in contrast to Edwards’ apparent thinking that the work Christ does in making atonement restores honor to God—something that belongs to owing and paying a debt of honor. The problem, as we have suggested before, is that Christ cannot perform both works. He cannot suffer as a penal substitute and a non-penal substitute. So, the question for us then is whether Edwards’ commitments to the rectoral demands of divine justice are at odds with his commitment to the role of retributive justice issued by penal substitution. Our answer is yes, they are at odds, and they are in no less than two important ways.

First, because Edwards construes sin as both a private offense against God for which humanity is liable to pay a debt of honor and as a private offense against God for which humanity is liable to pay a debt of punishment (which as we have seen previously is itself something of a contradiction, that is, if we understand a debt of punishment to be a public or societal offense)—both acts of which cannot be done simultaneously by a penal and non-penal substitute. In other words, Christ cannot absorb divine wrath for sin as a penal substitute, when he is at the same time (collectively) deferring or delaying that wrath until the consummation by making reparations on behalf of all humanity. The second way they are at odds, is because Edwards construes the nature of Christ’s substitutionary work in what we might call “personal” and then “meritorious” terms. By personal substitution, we mean the substitutionary work he performs by “standing in,” as it were, for individual persons upon whom are the retributive demands of God justice. By meritorious substitution, we mean the substitutionary work he performs by accumulating the reparative merit of honor that offsets the infinite demerit of sin. For, because God is infinitely holy, sins against God accrue an infinite demerit, as it were, that requires some infinite merit to offset.69 It seems to that, at least with respect to the mechanism of the atonement, these are not complimentary accounts of substitution so much as competing ones. For, no honor is restored to God by his meeting out retribution against the Son—paying a debt of punishment does not necessarily pay a debt of honor. In these two ways at least, there is a tension in Edwards’ account of Christ’s atoning work. Against this detailed backdrop, let us consider some Edwards Jr’s thinking on the matter.

Of the variety of theological writings that offer some additionally detailed insight into the development of his father’s legacy regarding the atonement, there are two works in particular that shed some light on Edwards Jr’s thoughts about the work of Christ. The first is his “Thoughts on the Atonement,”echoes of which appear in the second piece called “Remarks on the Improvements Made in Theology by His Father, President Edwards.” In both cases, the younger Edwards makes a number curious statements that point in the direction of his ascent to something along the lines a penal substitution model atonement. What is interesting—what makes this evidence so curious—is that Edwards Jr has never been attributed with articulating anything but a so-called penal non-substitution model of atonement, where (roughly) the work Christ accomplishes is claimed to be that of a penal example—repairing the dishonor done to the moral law by humanity’s transgression(s) against it. The following two statements, each one represent a sort of core sample of ideas in which are resident both Dr. Edwards’ clear out-working of the penal non-substitution model and the presence of substitutionary language in keeping with his father. Dr Edwards writes,

By atonement, I mean something done or suffered, which, to the purpose of supporting the honor and dignity of the divine law and government, shall be equivalent to the punishment of the sinner according to law. Therefore, the atonement made by Christ implies his substitution in the stead of the sinner, who is to be saved by him; or that he suffered that in the sinner’s stead, which as effectually tended to discourage, or prevent transgression, and excite to obedience, as the punishment of the transgressor himself, according to the letter of the law would have done.70

In another place he maintains,

The atonement is the substitute for the punishment threatened in the law; and was designed to answer the same ends of supporting the authority of the law, the dignity of the divine moral government, and the consistency of the divine conduct in legislation and execution. By the atonement it appears that God is determined that his law shall be supported; that it shall not be despised or transgressed with impunity; and that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God. The very idea of an atonement or satisfaction for sin, is something which, to the purposes of supporting the authority of the divine law, the dignity and consistency of the divine government, is equivalent to the punishment of the sinner, according to the literal threatening of the law.71

Clearly, from these statements, the idea of substitutionary atonement is part of the way Edwards Jr thinks about Christ’s work. Whether we can call this a full-blow doctrine of penal substitution remains to be seen. At most, we are left wondering just what Edwards Jr actually believes about the atonement, and specifically, how a substitutionary work plays into a non-substitutionary model of Christ’s work. It seems to us there are (at least) three possible answers. Consider that both the good Doctor was simply unconscious of the impact of the commitment they was making by trotting out such a claim—a case of category confusion. Given the relative precision of Edwards Jr’s account, this seems highly unlikely. If so, then perhaps he actually saw a theological way forward—a way that make the New England model of penal non-substitution unique to the rest of the moral government tradition—that we have yet to discover—a way that Christ can be both a substitute and a non-substitute that avoids what is an obvious logical contradiction. The most likely possibility, it seems to us, has to do with his construal of the nature of substitution. Notice that Dr. Edwards says nothing about Christ being a substitute for individuals. Notice also his emphasis on Christ’s substitutionary work as having a direct impact on the demands of the moral law, which, as we saw in the case of President Edwards is a public or societal matter—humanities offence is against the moral law, not God, strictly speaking. By implication, it looks like the solution (atonement) to the problem (transgression of the moral law) effects all humanity. How can this be? The answer may be that he augmented individual substitutionary atonement to some account of universal substitutionary atonement, in keeping with Crisp’s relatively recent suggestion that we ought to understand two things: First, the New England theologians were interested in doctrinal development and ought to be seen in this light (rather than some sort of doctrinal decline and fall, as has been the earlier trend). Second, their developments as it relates to the atonement tended toward expressions of some sort of hypothetical universalism, according to which Christ’s work extends in some sense to all persons—like we see here from Dr. Edwards. What then about the President Edwards? How do we make sense of the anomalous appearance of both substitutionary language, moral government language, and the oddities of his account of rectoral and retributive justice? Perhaps looking further down the historical road to Gelston will enable us to look back at Doctor and President Edwards with some greater clarity.

II.4. Gelston on Atonement

To this point we have challenged the idea that says that the moral government or penal non-substitution model of atonement was the atonement model of choice amongst the New England theologians from Dr. Edwards onward. Interestingly, our findings reveal that not only should we think of President Edwards’ account of the atonement as “thicker” than has hitherto been thought, but that we should also think of Dr. Edwards’ model of atonement as “thicker” than his most recent interpreter has made out. In what remains of this introduction, we aim to show that there is some data suggesting that Gelston himself inherited this otherwise odd, amalgamated tradition of holding to some aspect of both a penal and non-penal substitution model of atonement. To get at Gelston’s thinking about these matters, we have isolated the following list of atonement-specific questions and answers from his Systematic Collection:

Question 152 [201]. Why was a satisfaction or atonement necessary to the dispensation of pardon?

Question 153 [202]. Why was a satisfaction or atonement so great as that of Christ necessary to the dispensation of pardon?

Question 154 [203]. In what consisted the essence of the atonement of Christ? In his obedience, or his sufferings, or in both?

Question 155 [204]. In what sense did he satisfy divine justice by his sacrifice?

Question 156 [205]. Was God under an obligation of justice to provide an atonement for sinners?

Question 158 [207]. Did Christ redeemed all men alike, elect and non-elect?

Question 171. [233]. Did Christ suffer and die in the stead as well as for the benefit of his people?

Question 172. [234]. Could he have made atonement without suffering in stead of his people?

Question 173 [235]. Did Christ pay the debt for the elect, so that they can claim salvation on the foot of justice?

Question 174 [236]. Where the sufferings of Christ to the purpose of supporting the divine law equivalent to the endless torments of the sinner?

Question 175 [238]. Do the sufferings and obedience of Christ proved to the divine law to be a just law?

Let us take each question and answer in turn, offer some brief commentary, after which we will conclude with a series of implications from our findings along with some suggestions for further research. Gelston asks, in Question 152, “Why was a satisfaction or atonement necessary to the dispensation of pardon?” His response is as follows:

Answer 152. In order to the dispensation of pardon and atonement, satisfaction is necessary because without this the law and the moral government of God must fall into contempt. If a law be made, and the penalty be not executed when broken, it is of no more consequence than if no penalty had been annexed. Indeed, the law is of no mere importance than mere advice in the view of all rational beings. It would be more contemptible than advice. For, it pretends to something which is not supported. Not only the law, but the character of the lawgiver must fall equally into contempt. This is the case in human governments, and this would be the case in the divine. If the honor of the law be not supported by a proper execution of its threatenings, the moral government of God would be subject to constant disorder and confusion. In this case, the rebellious may go on with impunity and with increasing wickedness. Nor would there be anything to deter others from the like. In this way, infinite mischief may be produced and be forever experienced without any diminution or relief.

Either, therefore, the full penalty of the law must be executed or some atonement must be made which, in support of the divine law and government, will answer the like purposes with an infliction of the punishment. No pardon of consequences can be obtained without an atonement or satisfaction which is equivalent to the full demands of the law.

There are several points worth highlighting here. Clearly Gelston is committed, like his mentor, Dr. Edwards, to the idea of the necessity of atonement. Notice also that Gelston frames the problem of the moral law’s demands in the context of divine honor. It interesting that he links these demands so intimately with the demands of the lawgiver. “If the honor of the law be not supported by a proper execution of its threatenings, the moral government of God would be subject to constant disorder and confusion.” This is quite a telling statement. For, either a payment must be rendered or atonement—a suitably equivalent payment—supporting the divine law and government be made. That said, it not altogether clear from Gelston’s answer what mechanism is explicitly at work in atoning for human sin. His use of the term “equivalent”—reminiscent of penal non-substitution—might be a clue. That he says, “Either, therefore, the full penalty of the law must be executed or some atonement must be made” is confirming of the same. However, notice the subtle distinction of the either-or clauses at play here. Gelston seems to be affirming that Christ’s atoning work assumes that Christ never actually paid the penalty of the law. In other words, his “suitably equivalent” payment is a sacrifice of a non-penal substitution, which is yet something new altogether. That said, his thinking of sin as an offense against the moral and God pulls in a different direction.

In question 153, Gelston considers “why was a satisfaction or atonement so great as that of Christ necessary to the dispensation of pardon?” His answer is as follows,

(Answer 153) The evil of sin is infinite, and in its nature and consequences tends to produce infinite mischief in the moral government of God. No atonement, therefore, could wipe off this evil, but that which is also infinite. The sinner would make no atonement by repentance and reformation, for they are already do. He cannot suffer a punishment of the temporary kind which will be adequate to the crime; for it would be but finite. Nor could any creature, however great, atone: because what ever he should suffer would still be finite. It is allowed, however, that a creature more excellent than man might have made an atonement proportionally greater. But to render an atonement completely adequate, the person must be infinite in dignity and excellence, or suffer and infinite evil fully equal to the sins of those for whom he makes atonement. Hence, it was that an atonement so great as that of Christ was necessary.

Gelston makes the case for explicit support of the doctrine of the necessity for atonement, something made much of in Crisp’s analysis of Edwards Jr. He writes, “The evil of sin is infinite, and in its nature and consequences tends to produce infinite mischief in the moral government of God. No atonement, therefore, could wipe off this evil, but that which is also infinite. The sinner would make no atonement by repentance and reformation, for they are already do.” Gelston goes on to make clear that a divine person is necessary to make atonement. Gelston’s emphasis on the necessity of the atonement represents a token of the Anselmian tradition (which echoes the non-penal substitution found in the final part of his response in the previous question), and yet still does not commit Gelston to either a view of penal substitution or non-substitution.72

In question 155, Gelston pushes further toward this distinction when he asks, “In what sense did he satisfy divine justice by his sacrifice?” What he says about how the atonement is answerable to divine justice and for whom it is answerable will reveal a great deal about Gelston’s theological commitment. He argues,

(Answer 155) Christ so completely answered the demands of the law as that, the believer may be saved from the curse of it, and yet the honor of the law and the dignity and authority of the divine government be fully supported. The penalty of the law, however, may still be executed to the full extent upon the finally impenitent. Justice therefore, has received no satisfaction with respect to them. And indeed, the believer, were it not for the constitution and promises of God might, notwithstanding all Christ has done and suffered, experience the full punishment due to his sins. The believer, therefore, would not demand a release from punishment, as a debtor might demand a release from his debt when a third person had paid for him the full demand of his creditor. Justice, therefore, is not satisfied with respect to the believer as it is with respect to the debtor. God was under no obligation from justice to accept the atonement which Christ has made: and if he actually does except of it, it must be from sovereign mercy and free grace.

There are several important observations that might be made here. First, notice that Gelston appears to think Christ’s work solves a problem related to the law that entails a solution to problem of offenses against God himself; something we will see again in his answer to question 175. Second, notice that the solution to the problem is not collective, that is, not for all humanity. “Did Christ redeem all men alike, elect and non-elect?” His answer is quite telling, pushing directly against Crisp’s suggestion that hypothetical universalism was a doctrine that developed amongst the New England theologians. While it may have developed so for Bellamy, but perhaps not for Gelston. He argues that “[t]he believer, therefore, would not demand a release from punishment, as a debtor might demand a release from his debt when a third person had paid for him the full demand of his creditor. Justice, therefore, is not satisfied with respect to the believer as it is with respect to the debtor.” In other words, the work Christ was somehow in Gelston’s mind accomplished only for the elect. With his repeated reference to “believers,” this suggests a substitutionary act on the part of Christ, which again hints in the direction of his subscription to something like a doctrine of penal substitution.

Next, in Question 156, Gelston considers whether God was “under an obligation of justice to provide an atonement for sinners?” To this he responds, rather briefly, that

(Answer 156) If God had been under an obligation of justice to provide an atonement for sinners it must be on account of his law. For, surely if the law of the holy, just and good, is so far from requiring God to provide an atonement, strict, distributive justice requires the actual punishment due to the violation of the law. Since, therefore, the law is thus holy, just and good, as is evident from the nature of it, and the declarations of God’s word, if an atonement be made for the violation of it, it must proceed not from justice, but the goodness, mercy and grace of God.

There are two rather interesting elements to this answer, chief among which is Gelston’s introduction of the concept of distributive justice. This category often assumes two other (sub)species of divine justice: remunerative justice—having to do with rewards, and retributive justice—having to do with punishment.73 As we have already seen, the penal substitution model of atonement is mostly often directly associated with overcoming the problem of divine retribution. That Gelston speaks here of distributive justice, makes at least some logical room for our thinking that the aspect of remunerative justice must play into the way he conceived of Christ’s work. How it factors in is the question. What is clear from the previous section is that functional role played by Gelston’s affirmation of remunerative justice puts him at an increased distance from penal substitution. The second point of interest here is Gelston’s seemingly intentional link between divine mercy and divine justice. That atonement is made by virtue of God’s mercy rather than by some judicial precedent lends support to idea that God has some notion of substitution in mind. What is substituted? is the question. Is this a substitution of one for particular individuals, as in the case of penal substitution? We might well think so, especially in view of his answer to question 156. Perhaps this is merely a nod to the notion of suitable equivalence. It is not entirely clear.

Without really supplying us with answer, Gelston moves on to question 157, where he asks “Does the appointment of a Mediator prove that God is already reconciled to men?”

(Answer 157) If the appointment of Mediator prove[s] that God is already reconciled to men, then it will prove that he is so without the execution of the office as Mediator. If so, then, there was no necessity of Mediator. But surely a God of infinite goodness and compassion would never require any thing of this kind, unless absolutely necessary. The design of the Mediator is to lay a foundation, so that he may become reconciled to mankind in a consistency with his law and moral government. But to say that reconciliation takes place previous to the undertaking and accomplishment of the Mediator’s work is to place the effect before the cause.

Besides, none are interested in the benefits of the atonement until they are possessed of those qualifications which are made the necessary prerequisites. Nor are any sinners reconciled to God until they are interested in the benefits of this atonement.

Here we see that Gelston has in mind that the design of the atonement is such that it makes restitution between humanity and the divine according to both his moral law and moral governance; something we saw in answer 156. Notice his appeal to the necessity of the atonement. His suggestion that the Mediator “is to lay a foundation” hints at some interesting points. What is this foundation? Whatever it is, it appears that it is something definitive, that is, something from which God is able then to execute his retributive and/or remunerative justice. It also appears that by this work of mediation, God is able to deal in an effective way with both believers and non-believers. Notice, finally, that reconciliation to God, as Gelston sees it, is not something which those prior to Christ’s work enjoyed the true privilege of.

In question 158, Gelston asks whether “Christ redeemed all men alike, elect and non-elect?” To this he responds:

(Answer 158) The atonement of Christ is sufficient for all mankind would day, but accept of it upon the terms proposed. The invitation of the gospel is in universal terms, “whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Revelation 22.17. So far, the elect and non-elect are alike. But the application of this redemption will be made to the elect alone. Nor was it the design of God. From eternity that any but the elect should actually accept of the proposed atonement and enjoyed the happiness of the redeemed. It is the elect who are chosen of God in Christ before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1.14. It is the elect who are “Justified by his grace freely through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.” Romans 3.24. It is the elect who are redeemed from the curse of the law. Galatians 3.13. And it is the elect who “seen a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.” Revelation 5.9.

Redemption, when used with reference to Christ, seems to mean the application of the benefits and blessings which he has procured to believers in this world, and the actual introduction of them to happiness in the world to come. But this is a happiness which none but the elect experience.

Had the atonement of Christ been designed to be extinguished, the guilds of a certain number of sins, as a man liquidates a debt of a certain fixed and determinant sum of money, he doubtless would have had the sins of the elect in view, and would have extinguished the guilt of these, but this does not appear to have been the object of the atonement. Strictly speaking, the atonement has extinguished. Neither the seems of the elect nor of the non-elect. But it has laid a foundation so that the punishment due to the sins of those who are interested in it, may as completely be removed as if they never had been guilty. Here, then, lies, the distinction: the elect will experience this. But the non-elect, in consequences of their neglect, will not experience it.

Here Gelston seems, rather strangely, to affirm something like hypothetical universalism, which more naturally fits with either Moral Government or Anselmian satisfaction, and echoes Crisp’s notion of doctrinal development. Gelston’s reference to the sufficiency-efficiency distinction of Christ’s work hints in this direction. That said, such thinking also might fit with a version of penal substitution, provided he construe the payment as one for sin, corporately construed, rather than individually construed where Christ pays a debt of punishment for the consequences of sin. It is not entirely clear to this point that this is what he has in view.

In question 171, Gelston asks: “Did Christ suffer and die in the stead as well as for the benefit of his people?” His answer is as follows.

(Answer 171) Christ suffered a punishment which would fully support the honor of the divine law and the dignity of the divine government, though his people be released from the punishment they personally deserve. Indeed, the object of his atonement was that they might thus be released. Still, however, it does not appear that they can demand this release as a debtor might insist upon a discharge when a third person had fully paid the demand of his creditor. Christ, therefore, did not suffer and die in the stead of his people so as to lay God under obligation to accept of the atonement, whether he chose or not. He, however, suffered and died so far in their stead. That day will not actually experience that punishment, which otherwise, they would have experienced. By his sufferings and death. He completely atoned for the sins of his people. They will not, therefore, be required to undergo any farther punishment.

Here Gelston raises the question as to whether Christ suffered in “instead” and as a “benefit” for his people. His answer is interesting, but, once again not entirely clear. In fact, the following may be the most confusing aspect of Gelston’s thinking. “Christ suffered a punishment which would fully support the honor of the divine law and the dignity of the divine government, though his people be released from the punishment they personally deserve.” However, Gelston does not clearly articulate penal substitution. Gelston supports the notion of Christ bearing the penal demands of the law, but this does not necessarily suggest a substitutionary act, even more, a substitutionary act for individuals. In other words, it is not apparent that Christ absorbs the penalty for individuals. Gelston states, “therefore, did not suffer and die in the stead of his people so as to lay God under obligation to accept of the atonement.” He proceeds immediately to say something seemingly contradictory, namely, that “He, however, suffered and died so far in their stead.”

In question 172, he asks the related questions: “Could he have made atonement without suffering in stead of his people?”

Answer 172. It is not conceived that any thing without suffering would have constituted an atonement. Nothing but this could have shown the awful and tremendous consequences of sin. Nor could anything else have shown the incident evil and instructive tendency of sin. Nothing else would properly have been a penalty of the law. Obedience was already due from every creature, and could, in no sense be considered as a penalty. It does not appear, therefore, that the honor of the divine law or the dignity of the divine government could have been supported except by suffering, either personally, or having a substitute. This substitute must, to make an atonement which would be complete and satisfactory, suffer instead of his people, so far as mentioned above.

Here again, Gelston is clear that Christ’s suffering is necessary, yet it is an open question as to the priority of retributive justice or rectoral justice. Even where there is a place for retribution, it is not entirely clear that it amounts to (i) the absorption of a penalty or (2) that Christ’s act is committed on behalf of the individual. These fundamental tenets are essential elements of standard penal substitution theory. It is true that Gelston uses the language of “suffering” and “substitution,” yet he also uses the language of “satisfaction” and atonement for a collective whole, “his people”. In the quote above, Gelston suggests moral government or penal non-substitution when he says, “Nothing but this could have shown the awful and tremendous consequences of sin. Nor could anything else have shown the incident evil and instructive tendency of sin. Nothing else would properly have been a penalty of the law.” Gelston’s use of the word “substitution” seems to amount to a different kind of substitution than that found in penal substitutionary atonement. Rather, Gelston states that this “substitute” must “suffer instead of his people” not on behalf of his people or in their penal stead. With the variations of atonement theory swirling around during the time of New England theological development, it is not surprising that New England theologians, like Gelston, might use language reflective of penal substitution theory, moral government, and even the satisfaction theory. While the evidence points in favor of interpreting Gelston as a defender of moral government his language lends itself to some ambiguity.

According to question 173, Gelston inquires: “Did Christ pay the debt for the elect, so that they can claim salvation on the foot of justice?”

(Answer 173) When one man pays a debt for another, where a sum of money is due, this other on the principles of strict commutative justice may justly demand a release from his creditor. The reason is, because the creditor has received his full demand, and justice in no case demands more than the law points out, as due. But in matters of distributive justice. The law does not point out the punishment of one man as due for the crime of another. It has no right to demand this. And the one man should consent to suffer for another, the executive authority is not obliged to accept of the substitute. It is against the breaker of the law that it is threatenings are leveled, and it is to him alone that the law looks for satisfaction. Originally, therefore, it knows of no substitute. If then, one man actually suffers the punishment due to another, the demand of the law, according to strict distributive justice, still remains in full force. If the sovereign accept of this punishment as a substitute, it is not because this kind of justice requires his acceptance.

Similar is the case of the elect. This kind of distributive justice will never support any claim for salvation. To a matter like this, the punishment might still be executed.

The general good or general justice, however, admits of their salvation, and by virtue of God’s promise, on the ground of this, they have a right to expect it.

It seems clear from the above that Gelston has in mind rectoral satisfaction rather than the absorption of penal consequences. Christ does not so much assume the penalty of individual sin, but he honors God or the moral law in a way that creates a surplus benefiting humans. The notions of “credit” and “creditor” are clearly at home with Anselmian satisfaction, or, possibly, moral government. Whilst the discussion on whether the payment is paid directly to God or the moral law by which God maintains moral order is an open question, but what seems clear is his rejection of a certain variant of penal substitution that says that Christ suffered a loss on behalf of the elect so as to pay the debtor (as is clear here: “The law does not point out the punishment of one man as due for the crime of another. It has no right to demand this.”). Rather, Christ pays off the debt owed to God the creditor. In other words, he pays a positive demand.

For question 174, Gelston responds to the question of “Were the sufferings of Christ to the purpose of supporting the divine law equivalent to the endless torments of the sinner?” His answer is quite illuminating.

(Answer 174) The sufferings of Christ were not infinite in duration. Nor were they incident in quantity or degree, for it was his human nature, which suffered, and that was capable of only a finite degree of suffering. The infinite dignity of his person, however, gave value to his sufferings, which was fully equivalent to the endless torments of the sinner. Reason teaches us that the sufferings of a king’s son, especially if he possesses every amiable quality of a man, are of more value and importance than the sufferings of one of his lowest subjects. And in proportion, as the son is more elevated in station and character, his sufferings will be of proportionably more value in every respect, but especially to the support of the law and the dignity of the government.

We may be sure that the sufferings of Christ are equivalent to the endless torments of the sinner, from God’s actually accepting it as such. He would not accept of that which does not answer the demand of the law. This he fully intimates, when he says, “And ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; though ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hands? saith the Lord.” Malachi 1.13. That the sufferings of Christ were accepted as an equivalent is evident from what is abundantly asserted. “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” 1 Peter 2.24. “As Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, and offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour.” Ephesians 5.2. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” 2 Corinthians 5.21. Who gave himself a ransom for all.” 1 Timothy 2.6. “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” Hebrews 10.14.

Here Gelston again takes up and defends an aspect of suitable equivalence, this time by addressing the value of Christ’s sacrifice—a discussion that is often ignored or misconstrued by contemporary atonement theoreticians. That Christ’s sacrifice was suitably equivalent to the “eternal torments” is not the same thing as say that he endured the actual torments of hell for anyone. This seems to point away from Gelston’s subscription to a penal substitution theory. And at the same time, Gelston links humanities offense to both God and the moral law. It seems to us that despite the lack of clarity on these various comments of Gelston, that a fairly strong cumulative case can be made that he did not espouse a doctrine of penal substitution. So, what did he subscribe to in the end?

Finally, in question 175, Gelston asks, “Do the sufferings and obedience of Christ prove the divine law to be a just law?”

(Answer 175) It does not appear that the nature of the law is, in any instance, to be determined merely by its sanctions. The will or character of the lawgiver, the tendency of the law, and the nature of the trends rations against which its penalties are leveled, more properly give complexion to the law. Whenever, therefore, the justice of a law is questioned, the character of the lawgiver is equally questioned. And though he should execute the full extent of the threatening, this would not achieve the difficulty with respect to his law or character, for we know that an unjust and rigorous sovereign may commit the greatest injustice in this way, and be at proportionably greater distance from rectitude of heart. Something more than merely suffering the threatening of the law is necessary to vindicate its justice. Nor would mere obedience alone determine the law to be just. One of the contrary nature may be as punctually obeyed as if perfectly just, and it is injustice remain undiminished.

But if we take into consideration the true character of God and of Christ, we have the fullest assurance is law is holy, just and good. Without this, what ever be the sufferings in support of it, or however punctually obeyed, we would have no certainty of its justice.

In this final atonement-related question, Gelston further affirms his commitment to something other than penal substitution. The key phrase here is when Gelston says, “Something more than merely suffering the threatening of the law is necessary to vindicate its justice.” In this way, Gelston is saying that Christ must do more than merely suffer by absorbing the penal consequences. He must honor the law and its requirement, which in turn honor’s the Father. Notice again, as with his previous answer, the link between the moral law’s demands and the demands of God, the legislator. Although, these finer distinctions do not allow us to make a simple and easy categorization of what Gelston actually believed. The difficulty is parsing out his understanding of the specific mechanism at work in the atonement and how this relates to God and his moral law, particularly the specifics of meting out the requirements of the law beckons a serious scholarly return to the New England theological tradition, Gelston offering us one window into what remains a veritable trove of rich, under-researched theology. The complexity and depth of insight amongst New England theologians and the intricacy of doctrinal developments that have emerged from it are reflected here in the reading of Gelston.

Conclusion

To speak of New England dogmatics still remains something of a contradiction. Our introducing Gelston and his doctrine of atonement is but a modest contribution to this untapped and underdeveloped field of research. The doctrine of atonement reflects a wider and deeper conversation needing to occur with New England theology. So also is the relationship of Reformed dogmatics at large with their New England brethren.

Having been almost exclusively a matter of historical interest, and motivated primarily by questions about the nature of President Edwards’ doctrinal relationship to his intellectual progeny, contemporary systematic and constructive use of Edwards’ intellection tradition remains very much in its infancy. The atonement is but one example; one that still requires serious or sustained systematic theological inquiry. While penal substation theory was swirling around in New England discussions, it is apparent that it is not the dominant theory of the day—unlike what we find today in Reformed evangelical churches. How penal substitution assumed the dominant place in contemporary discussions depends on the social, cultural, and theological mores leading to its acceptance. During Gelston’s time and location, the moral government and Anselmian satisfaction are live, even popular, and robust options for New Englander’s. They, too, should be live options for contemporary theologians, as we have shown above. Through a process of retrieval, New England thought helps us raise new questions, in our social and historical context, about God’s relationship to his creation, the law, and Christ’s relationship to these doctrinal loci. Again, Gelston leads us to raise these questions.

Our brief investigation into Gelston provides one way in which the theologian might find it useful. What you have in your hands is a lens into the New England tradition and its influence on Reformed theological developments in America. Certainly other doctrines deserve our reflection. Gelston advances some interesting thoughts on the nature of revelation, natural knowledge of God, God’s Trinitarian nature, and the study of last things. These thoughts may or may not be novel insights from Gelston. Even still, they too reflect the New England tradition of theological development.

1. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 405.

2. The collected works of the most prominent New England theologians are housed in the thirty-seven-volume series, Kuklick, American Religious Thought of the 18th and 19th Centuries.

3. The most recent contribution to this literature are the essays contained in Crisp and Sweeney (eds.), After Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology.

4. Crisp, “Penal Non-Substitution,” 140–68.

5. The biographical information for Maltby Gelston is gathered from the following sources: Harrison, A Discourse Delivered . . . at the Funeral of Rev. Maltby Gelston (1857); Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale with Annals of the College History, Vol. 4, July 1778–June 1792 (1907), 708–9; Ogden, An Address Delivered . . . Union Hall, Jamaica, Long Island (1842), 4; Franklin, History of Long Island (1839), 144–26, 397; Giddings, The Giddings Family (1882), 123; Verill (ed.), Maltby-Maltbie Family History (1916), 342–432.

6. For a helpful resource on ministerial education in New England during this period, see: Gambrell, Ministerial Education in Eighteenth-Century New England. More recently, see: Warch, School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–40; Kling, “New Divinity School of Prophets 1750–1825: A Case Study in Ministerial Education,” 185–206; Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards on Education and His Educational Legacy,” 31–50; Bezzant, “‘Singly, Particularly, Closely’: Edwards as Mentor,” 228–247.

7. Inscribed on the first page of Gelston’s Systematic Collection, is a note which reads, “A copy by Maltby Gelston when studying divinity of the questions and answers of Dr. Edwards a son of President Edwards, when he gave instruction in theology in his study in New Haven to young men seeking the ministry—Mills B. Gelston, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1887.” Mills Bordwell Gelston was the seventh child of Maltby Gelston. He was born August 27, 1817 and died of a paralytic stoke February 28, 1903. Like his father, Mills Gelston was educated at Yale College and eventually became a Presbyterian minister to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

8. (Courtesy of Gloria Thorne) Gelston’s ledger (c.1832) records some interesting details about the social affairs of the town and his own interaction with its various members, one of which was the town’s ‘shoemaker,’ Willy Bertrum:

Tapping a pair of shoes .12 ½ (cents)

By mending shoe- .03

Making a pair of shoes- .50

Mending shoes & boots .16

Making small pair of shoes- .40

Making small pair of shoes- .30

Sole leather 4 pr. Shoes- .35

The ledger also records a variety of details of Gelston’s personal and church related interactions:

P[ai]d. David Northrop for recording 2 deeds @ .20c ea.

Thomas Hall for repair of windows at Meetinghouse $1.50,

drawing away old steeple .75

Delazon Hungerford — 3 days worth threshing - $1.50

Cloth for pantaloons — $2.16

To John Appleby, a bull — $9.00

Cyrus Hungerford — making pair boots & mending upper leather — $2.75

Eggs — 10 cents doz.

15 pounds nails @ 7 cents # = $1.05

Use of team for the day = .50c.

2 days chopping wood — $2

1 gal. cider = .25c

1 broom = .17c

knitting mittens = .25c

9. We are grateful to Gloria Thorne for supplying us with a transcribed copy of this document.

10. Thorne estimates that Gelston preached well over two thousand sermons during his ministerial tenure, more than nine hundred manuscripts of which remain catalogued and preserved at the Sherman Historical Society. The remaining sermon manuscripts, Thorne speculates, were either lost or offered to family or other ministers for keepsake.

11. We are grateful to Gloria Thorne for generously supplying us with a manuscript copy of this poem.

12. Bellamy undertook the private education over sixty men from the late 1750s almost until his death in 1790. For a comprehensive list of his ministerial students, see: Anderson, “Joseph Bellamy (1719–1790): The Man and his Work,” 356–450.

13. Hopkins, Life and Character of the Late Rev. Mr. Jonathan Edwards. For example, Samuel Hopkins records that directly upon his assuming the Presidency at New Jersey College (Princeton), Edwards assigned a list of ‘questions in divinity’ to the senior class. Accordingly, these questions were “to be answered before him [Edwards]; each [student] having opportunity to study and write what he thought proper upon them. When they came together to answer them, they found so much entertainment and profit by it, especially by the light and instruction Mr. Edwards communicated in what he said upon the questions, when they had delivered what they had to say, that they spoke of it with the greatest satisfaction and wonder,” 46–47.

14. Gambrell, Ministerial Education in Eighteenth-Century New England, ch. 6.

15. Bellamy’s injection of Calvinism into the vein of popular moral and legal discourse was endemic to the New England church and society alike. In the short period following its publication, True Religion Delineated had been purchased (in one particular case, sixty copies by the same individual!) and read by nearly everyone in New England. According to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bellamy’s so-called, “Blue book,” contained a catalogue of subscribers listing “almost every good old Massachusetts or Connecticut family name.” Stowe continues, saying, “Its dissemination was regarded as an act of religious ministry, and there is not the slightest doubt that it was heedfully and earnestly read in every good family of New England; and its propositions were discussed everywhere and by everybody,” Stowe, Oldtown Folks, 373–75ff.

16. Valeri writes, “According to the regnant moral discourse, doctrine was subject to a test of moral verification, so Bellamy was compelled to demonstrate how Calvinism satisfied the canons of natural law—observable, uniform, and universal principles that . . . upheld the virtue of benevolence. Bellamy assumed that by deducing evangelical doctrine from this moral law, he could meet the objections of his detractors without capitulating to Arminian soteriology and anthropology. He subsequently developed the doctrinal and practical emphases of his Calvinism in terms of moral and legal obligation. He thought that he could affirm the superiority of Calvinist theology without following the Antinomian path away from social and moral obligations,” Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England, 56–57. Tryon Edwards (1809–94) later described as proof of Bellamy’s “mental Samsonism” and his “almost unequalled power in the desk,” was the centralization of the doctrine of God’s moral government of all things within his theological system. Edwards, “Memoir,” lxiv, lx.

17. For more on the significance of Taylor, see Doug Sweeney’s excellent work: Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards.

18. There are at least three reasons for believing that Bellamy’s contribution to the Edwardsian intellectual tradition exceeded that of any other New Divinity thinker, including Edwards’ other principal disciple, Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803) and his codification of the so-called New Divinity theology in a System of Doctrines contained in Divine Revelation. First, all of Bellamy’s most influential New Divinity works (E.g., True Religion Delineated; The Great Evil of Sin, as it is Committed Against God; The Law, Our School-Master; The Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin, Vindicated; A Blow at the Root of Antinomianism of the Present Age, predate Hopkins’ most significant works, of which there were few. From this it might not even be unreasonable to suppose that Hopkins’ System of Doctrines had something of a negligible effect upon the already established views of those who had previously studied at Bellamy’s so-called, “school of prophets.” Following from this is the second reason, namely that Bellamy’s “school of prophets” was responsible for the education of the most influential New Divinity leaders of the next generation (For a list of Bellamy’s students see: Anderson, “Joseph Bellamy (1719–90): The Man and his Work.” 356–450; Third and finally, in the wake of Edwards’ death, the correspondence between Bellamy and Hopkins reveals Hopkins’ desire for Bellamy to be the spokesman for the New England Calvinists (see: Hopkins to Bellamy, October 8, 1758, HS 81268; Valeri, Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England, 72, n. 36). For a competing sentiment, see: Edwards Amasa Park, The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises by Edwards, Smalley, Maxcy, Emmons, Griffin, Burge and Weeks, with an Introductory Essay, lxii-lxiii.

19. Crisp, “The Moral Government of God: Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Bellamy on the Atonement,” 78–90.

20. Bellamy, “True Religion Delineated,” 345.

21. Ibid., 320–22.

22. “True Religion Delineated,” WJB 1811, 390–92.

23 For two helpful accounts of conservative theology’s descent into liberalism in New England from the mid-eighteenth century, both of which implicate Bellamy’s work as a substantive cause, see: Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in American; Smith, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin: A Study of American Theology Since 1750.

24. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement: Calvinism, the Congregational Ministry and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings.

25. Ibid., 13. For more detailed treatment of Hopkins and Disinterested Benevolence, see: Post, “Disinterested Benevolence: An American Debate over the Nature of Christian Love,” 356–68.

26. Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, ch. 5.

27. Harrison, A Discourse Delivered, 18. Bezzant rightly points the impertinence that such thinking would have been to Gelston’s mentor at the time, were it to have been made public. According to Bezzant, “Such an attitude in [President] Edwards stood in stark relief to the later reputation of those in the New Divinity, who, it was said, developed quite hierarchical conceptions of master and learner, in which refusal to accept the received wisdom of the theological system was met with disapproval,” “Edwards as Mentor,” 237–38.

28. The locus classicus for the decline and fall narrative of New England theology is found in Harountunian, Piety Versus Moralism. Arguably, the most helpful treatment of this dominant historiography is put forward by Brietenbach in “Piety and Moralism,” 177–204. See also: Valeri, Law and Providence, ch. 2.

29. Various iterations of the development of an atonement theory in New England theology appear in: Evans, Imputation and Impartation, 101–2; Stephens, “An Appeal to the Universe,” 55–72; Guelzo, Edwards on the Will, 134–5; Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 114–16. Rudisill, The Doctrine of the Atonement; Foster, A Genetic; Boardman, A History of New England Theology.

30. The Moral Government model of atonement comes in a surprising variety of expressions. Traditionally, though perhaps mistakenly, the first to articulate a Moral Government model was Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), the Dutch (Arminian) theologian, and jurist (this has recently been contested; see: Williams, “A Critical”).

31. According to Packer, there is no single paradigm that accounts for all iterations of the doctrine of penal substitution. Nevertheless he locates certain features or aspects common to most accounts, aspects including: 1) the retributive demands of divine justice, 2) the necessity of the atonement, 3) the substitutionary and penal nature of atonement, and 4) the infinite, objective value of Christ’s vicarious sacrifice; see: Packer, “What Did the Cross Achieve?” 3–46.

32. See e.g.: Crisp, “Penal Non-Substitution,” 299–327 (hereafter, RCPT); Crisp, “The Moral Government of God,” 78–90; Cooley and Sweeney, “The Novelty of the New Divinity;” Cooley, “The New England Theology and Atonement”

33. Joseph Bellamy was the first of the New England theologians to articulate what has been traditionally characterized as a full-scale moral government theory of atonement. His account was in many ways formulaic for many later Edwardsians, including Samuel Hopkins, Jonathan Edwards Jr, Edwards Amasa Park, amongst other. Bellamy’s True Religion Delineated (1750) is commonly regarded as the first expression of the moral government theory in America. Its wild success is recorded in such works as: Stowe, Oldtown Folks, 373–75; Valeri, Law and Providence. For more on the relationship between Bellamy and Edwards and an explanation of the so-called “endorsement story,” see: Crisp, “The Moral Government of God,” 78–90.

34. Park, “The Rise of the Edwardian Theory of the Atonement.” For some helpful and rather critical interaction with Parks essay, see: Cooke, “Edwards on the Atonement,” 97–120. Works comparable to the value of Parks’ essay, include: Bellamy, True Religion Delineated; Edwards Jr, “On the Necessity of the Atonement,” 1–42; Edwards Jr, “Remarks on the Improvements,” 481–92; Edwards Jr, “Thoughts on the Atonement;” West, The Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement.

35. “When moral creatures are brought into existence, there must be a moral government. It cannot be reconciled with the wisdom and goodness of God, to make intelligent creatures and leave them at random, without moral law and government” (Edwards Jr, “On the Necessity of the Atonement,” 6).

36. Edwards, WJE 1:431 (Edwards discusses God’s moral government at varying lengths throughout his works. For some of his more detailed discussion, see: “Miscellanies” nos. 13, 102, 119, 132, 137, 177, 346, 422, 525, 547, 651, 661 n. 5, 702, 742, 752, 760, 762, 954, 1039, 1183, 1196, 1299; “Concerning the End for which God Created the World,” WJE 8:429, 488–99).

37. According to Park, “The moral law is a transcription of the divine perfections, and all God’s government is designed to unfold his own true character, and exhibit a genuine picture of it to the world. Accordingly, we may forever expect to see his mind written, and his character as indubitably expressed, in what he does, as in what he says, in the government which he exercises, as in the law which he has given,” The Atonement, lxvii). In this passage, Park quotes West, The Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement, 23, 25, 26, 66, 88, 112, 114, 150, 153.

38. Edwards writes elsewhere that “this was the grand rule given to Adam; and the command of not eating the forbidden fruit was only given to try whether he would keep God’s commands or no, to try whether he would be obedient to the law of nature, or moral law. As the moral law was the grand law given to the children of Israel in the wilderness, and is often called THE LAW, and is spoken of as THE LAW given to them, and the time of the giving of the Ten Commands is spoken of as the time of the giving the law, as if that had been the whole of the law given—and indeed, it was virtually so—and all those ceremonial laws that were added were only for the trial of their obedience to the great rules of this law, as particularly “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” etc.: it was to try whether they would keep that moral law, the rules of which required that they should love God with all their heart, with all their souls, and with all their mind, and all their strength, and regard his authority and glory, and submit themselves wholly to him, and yield themselves up to him, and obey and serve him as their God’ (“Miscellanies” n. 884, WJE 20:144). See also: “Blank Bible,” WJE 24:702, 1125.

39. Edwards, “The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended,” WJE 3:141.

40. This move may well be as much an ecclesial manoeuvre as it is a theological one. Consider that the generation following Edwards’ death was marked by ecclesial difficulties consisting chiefly in a lack of authority. Mark Valeri argues that Edwards’ chief successor, Joseph Bellamy, in his True Religion Delineated, attempted to wed his theological determinism to the language of the “moral discourse of Enlightenment ethics,” convinced that the only hope for the doctrinal rehabilitation of New England was to demonstrate publicly the indispensability of divine authority to the virtue of the moral law. See: Bellamy, “True Religion Delineated,” 50, 51. See also: Valeri, Law and Providence, 42, 49, 51; Erskine to Bellamy: Jan. 26, 1753, HS document number 81199, Joseph Bellamy Papers, Boxes 187–90, Folders 2929–64, Case Memorial Library, Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut. According to Valeri, “Bellamy’s burden was to elucidate this axiom in a way that rendered experimental Calvinism ethically compelling” (Law and Providence, 50).

41. Park, The Atonement, xiii–x.

42. Edwards Jr, “On the Necessity of the Atonement,” 8–9. Compare with, “The atonement is the substitute for the punishment threatened in the law; and was designed to answer the same ends of supporting the authority of the law, the dignity of the divine moral government, and the consistency of the divine conduct in legislation and execution. By the atonement it appears that God is determined that his law shall be supported; that it shall not be despised or transgressed with impunity; and that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God. The very idea of an atonement or satisfaction for sin, is something which, to the purposes of supporting the authority of the divine law, the dignity and consistency of the divine government, is equivalent to the punishment of the sinner, according to the literal threatening of the law.”

43. Bellamy, True Religion Delineated, 60. See also, “The design of the incarnation, life and death of the Son of God, was to give a practical declaration, in the most public manner, even in the sight of the whole intellectual system, that God was worthy of all that love, honor, and obedience, which his law required, and that sin was as great an evil as the punishment threatened supposed; and so to declare God’s righteousness, and condemn the sins of an apostate world, to the end [that] God might be just, and yet a justifier of the believer. And this he did by dying in our room and stead” (Bellamy, “An Essay,” 378; see also: West, Scripture Doctrine of the Atonement, ch. 2).

44. Bellamy, True Religion Delineated, 320–22.

45. Particular attention is paid to this observation in Crisp’s, “The Moral Government of God,” 85–90.

46. Crisp, “Penal Non-Substitution,” 145–48.

47. Ibid., 148.

48. Crisp, “Penal Non-Substitution,” 148–51.

49. Ibid., 152.

50. Crisp, “Penal Non-Substitution,” 153–57.

51. Crisp, “Penal Non-Substitution,” 157–58.

52. Crisp, RCPT, 314.

53. Ibid., 312.

54. Ibid., 316.

55. For more on his significance to the Edwardsian tradition, see: Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger.

56. Edwards Jr, “On Necessity of the Atonement,” 1–42; Edwards Jr, “Remarks on the Improvements,” 481–92 and “Thoughts on the Atonement,” 493–508.

57. Edwards Jr, “On the Necessity of the Atonement,” 8–9.

58. Lewis, RCPT, 329 (emphasis added). According to Lewis, “in the case of a debt, what is required is that the creditor shall not suffer a loss. Whereas in the case of a debt of punishment what is required is that the debtor shall suffer a loss.”

59. “Miscellany” n. 1076, WJE 20:460.

60. Matthew Levering offers a recent and helpful synthesis of Edwards’ thinking about punitive nature of divine justice and its relationship to both spiritual and somatic death in: The Ecumenical Edwards, 134–40. Levering’s argument lends considerable strength to the idea that Edwards did in fact support some version of penal substitution. It is worth noting that several of his references to the nature of human suffering (and God’s providential role in that suffering), however, might well be read in support of a penal non-substitution or moral government model.

61. “Miscellany” n. 449, WJE 13:497 (emphasis added).

62. For a recent and interesting account of Edward O’hare and the Capone empire, see: Eig, Get Capone.