Creation and God’s attributes

Bombaro ( Jonathan Edwardss Vision of Reality: The Relationship of God to the World, Redemption History, and the Reprobate , 91-2) quotes these passages from Edwards Micellanies indicating that God would have unrealized attributes if He had not created the world:

“There are many of the divine attributes that, if God had not created the world, never would have had any exercise: the power of God, the wisdom and prudence and contrivance of God, and the goodness and mercy and grace of God, and the justice of God” (553).

“It may be inquired why God would have the exercises of his perfections and expressions of his glory known and published abroad. Ans. It was meet that his attributes and perfections should be expressed. It was the will of God that they should be expressed and should shine forth. But if the expressions of his attributes ben’t known, they are not; the very being of the expression depends on the perception of created understandings. And so much the more as the expression is known, so much the more it is” (662).

A few reactions:

First, regarding the first quotation: Some of the difficulties that Edwards senses here could be relieved by attending more closely to the meanings of these attributes in Scripture. “Justice” in the sense of retributive justice may not be a feature of Triune life (though in some sense it may be), but justice as faithfulness and loyalty in relation certainly is. Since the Son is the very wisdom of the Father and the Spirit is the conveyor of wisdom, wisdom and prudence would also seem to characterize God’s life ad intra . Is “contrivance” and creativity a dimension of Triune fellowship? I think we must say Yes. All of these attributes and perfections manifest differently in relation to creation, especially to a fallen creation, but that doesn’t mean that they are somehow awakened only with the fiat lux . (Of course, if “exercise” here means “exercise ad extra ,” my reactions become moot. But then so does Edwards’s statement: For it’s simply true by definition that God’s attributes don’t have ad extra exercise without an extra to exercise them in.)

Second, the second quotation actually seems to run counter to Bombaro’s claims, since Edwards emphasizes that “it was the will of God” to express Himself. This seems very traditionally Calvinistic: God is perfect and cannot be added to; but He wills to create and display His glory; this will is filling, an expression of the kind of God that He is, but it is not necessary.

Third, the last part of Miscellany 662 is very intriguing: God’s perfections ad intra need no created perceiver to exist fully. But His perfections expressed outside Himself are expressed to communicate, and if there is no recipient on the other end of the line there is no communication or expression. It’s not that the perfections are “objectively expressed” even if they are never received. Edwards is right that “expression depends on the perception of created understandings” because it’s the nature of expressions and communications not only to be given but to be received. In that sense, God’s ad extra self-expression is dependent on creatures. But then we can make a Barthian maneuver to note that the Spirit is the creator of receptiveness, so that, as I said in an earlier post, even the creature’s responsiveness is encompassed by God’s dependence on God.