While he may be best known for his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards focused on Heaven and God’s blessedness more than the horrors of Hell. Edwards grounds divine blessedness in the eternal life of the triune God and then explains creation, redemption, and the saints’ beatific joy as the communication of that already complete fullness. His theology unites the classical affirmation of God’s aseity with a dynamic vision of God’s self-diffusive goodness.

I. Foundational Paradigms and History of Interpretation

Patristic and scholastic theologians describe God as beatitudo in se. Augustine wrote that “blessed is he who possesses God” because God himself is the blessed life (Civ. Dei 9.5). Aquinas argued that God is “his own beatitude” (ST I.26.1). Calvin similarly emphasized that God is “the blessed God” (1 Tim 1:11), whose happiness is in himself, and into whose joy believers are adopted (Inst. 1.13.2).

Jonathan Edwards stands within this tradition but sharpens it. In his Discourse on the Trinity he begins: “God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself, in perfectly beholding and infinitely loving, and rejoicing in, his own essence and perfections” (Edwards, Discourse on the Trinity, WJE 21:113). He then unfolds God’s blessedness as the Father’s delight in the Son and the Spirit as the personal act of love and joy (WJE 21:117–18).

II. The Problem That Pressed for Clarification

Edwards’s theology of divine blessedness was shaped by an objection: does speaking of God’s delight in communicating his fullness make creation necessary to God’s joy. In The End for Which God Created the World, Edwards responds that God’s outgoing love reveals not need but fullness: “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow” (Edwards, End of Creation, WJE 8:448). God is “independently glorious and happy” apart from creation (WJE 8:449).

III. The Progression of Edwards’s Ideas

1. Ad intra: Blessedness as Triune Fullness

In Miscellanies no. 94, Edwards insists that God’s happiness is complete in himself: “God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself, in perfectly beholding, infinitely loving, and rejoicing in, his own essence and perfections” (Edwards, Miscellanies 94, WJE 13:282). This triune joy is foundational. The Father’s infinite happiness is “in the enjoyment of his Son” (Discourse on the Trinity, WJE 21:118), while the Spirit is “the divine love, complacence and joy” (WJE 21:117). This same intra-Trinitarian blessedness was also described in detail by John Webster in his later theological works in opposition to theistic personalism. Webster noted that the divine blessedness was so intertwined with a proper view of divine aseity that the two concepts should not be separated. 

2. Ad extra: Blessedness Communicated Without Need

Edwards affirms that God communicates his own happiness, yet he does so freely and without deficiency. In Miscellanies no. 448 he writes that God’s joy is shared with creatures “not because he needs them, but because his own happiness is so full that it flows out” (Edwards, Miscellanies 448, WJE 18:266). This matches the fountain analogy in End of Creation (WJE 8:448).

3. Participation: The Saints’ Blessedness

Edwards links God’s blessedness to the saints’ eternal joy. In Miscellanies no. 679 he writes: “The saints have communion with God in his happiness, and God makes them happy by making them partakers of his happiness” (Edwards, Miscellanies 679, WJE 18:281). In Miscellanies no. 1069 he expands: “The happiness of heaven is the fullness of God’s own joy, in which the saints participate as they are united to Christ” (Edwards, Miscellanies 1069, WJE 20:449).

This comes to expression in his sermon “Heaven Is a World of Love,” where he declares: “There dwells God the Father, who is the fountain of love; and there dwells God the Son, who is the Lamb of God, filled with love; and there dwells the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love” (Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, WJE 8:369). Heaven is blessed because it shares in God’s own triune blessedness (WJE 8:373).

IV. Exegesis: Μακάριος and the Blessed God

In 1 Tim 1:11 Paul names the gospel as “the gospel of the glory of the blessed [μακαρίου] God.” The adjective μακάριος indicates fullness of joy, fitting only for the divine life. Edwards cites Prov 8:30, “I was daily his delight,” as a revelation of the Son as the Father’s eternal joy (Discourse on the Trinity, WJE 21:118). Likewise John 17:24 shows the Father’s love for the Son “before the foundation of the world,” a text Edwards uses to ground God’s eternal blessedness in intra-trinitarian love.

V. Synthesis

For Edwards, divine blessedness is not a mood but the very being of the triune God. The Father rejoices in the Son, the Son delights in the Father, and the Spirit is the personal joy between them. Creation is the overflow of this fullness, not its cause. The saints’ blessedness is their being caught up into this eternal delight by the Spirit through union with Christ. Thus, when Paul speaks of “the blessed God,” Edwards hears the triune life itself opened to creatures through the gospel.

Selected Bibliography

Edwards, Jonathan. Charity and Its Fruits. In Ethical Writings. Edited by Paul Ramsey. WJE 8. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

———. The End for Which God Created the World. In Ethical Writings. Edited by Paul Ramsey. WJE 8. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

———. Miscellanies, a–500. Edited by Thomas A. Schafer. WJE 13. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

———. Miscellanies, 501–832. Edited by Ava Chamberlain. WJE 18. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

———. Miscellanies, 833–1152. Edited by Amy Plantinga Pauw. WJE 20. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

———. Discourse on the Trinity. In Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith. Edited by Sang Hyun Lee. WJE 21. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.