CRAIG BIEHL: The Infinite Merit of Christ

Today I finished Craig Biehl's 2009 book The Infinite Merit of Christ: The Glory of Christ's Obedience in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards published by Reformed Academic Press. It is excellent!

One thing that often frustrates me with books about Edwards is that they lack so much of Edwards. Biehl's book is wonderful break from the norm. It is thick with the thought of Edwards! Dr. Joel R. Beeke of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary says it well:

While setting the record straight on Edwards theology through leaning heavily on his own writings (800 quotes from Edwards!), Biehl's work is also a tour de force for the confirmation of Reformed orthodoxy in the midst of ongoing debates about justification today.

Here are two of the quotes Biehl pulls from Edwards that struck me as simply beautiful:

Christ's love in making him willing to offer himself up on the fire of God's wrath, and carrying him through the torments of that flame, even till it was extinguished, did as it were conquer and quench it. Never was there such a gift of love and labor of love as this. It as more exceeds all the expressions of love in any man or angel, than the treasures of the most wealthy prince exceed the stores of the meanest peasant (201).

The heart of Christ at that time was full of distress, but it was fuller of love to vile worms: his sorrows abounded, but his love did much more abound. Christ's soul was overwhelmed with a deluge of grief, but this was from a deluge of love to sinners in his heart sufficient to overflow the world, and overwhelm the highest mountains of its sins. Those great drops of blood that fell down to the ground were a manifestation of an ocean of love in Christ's heart (220).

And demonstrating Edwards's view that Christ's obedience unto death is infinitely meritorious as an infinite condescension (the heading of the section), Biehl puts this thought from Edwards together beautifully:

At the time of Christ's sufferings, "he had that depravity set before him as it is, without disguise," in its "true nature" and "utmost hatred and contempt of God," "in its ultimate tendency and desire, which is to kill God." "He felt the fruits of that wickedness. It was then directly levelled [sic] against himself, and exerted itself against him to work his reproach and torment," giving "a stronger sense of its hatefulness on the human nature of Christ." Yet,

He was willing to die for his enemies at the same time that he was feeling the fruits of their enmity, while he felt the utmost effects and exertions of their spite against him in the greatest possible contempt and cruelty towards him in his own ignominy, torments, and death; and partly in that he was willing to atone for their being his enemies in these very sufferings, and by that very ignominy, torment, and death that was the fruit of it. The sin and wickedness of men, for which Christ suffered to make atonement, was, as it were, set before Christ in his view (211-12).