Why Love Is Not the Essence of Saving Faith: George Hunsinger's Critique of Jonathan Edwards and the Danger of “Dispositional Soteriology”

Introduction

In 2004, George Hunsinger, professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, published an important article in the Westminster Theological Journal titled “Dispositional Soteriology: Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone.” You can read it here on our church website: Dispositional Soteriology: Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone. In that essay, Hunsinger carefully examined Jonathan Edwards’s long 1734/1738 treatise on justification. While he praised Edwards’s intellectual brilliance and careful argumentation, Hunsinger also exposed serious theological flaws.

According to Hunsinger, Edwards departed from the classic Reformation teaching of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Edwards introduced what Hunsinger calls a “dispositional soteriology”—a view in which faith is treated not only as the instrument by which sinners receive Christ, but also as a virtue or disposition in believers that makes them “fitting” to be justified. In Edwards’s system, love and obedience blend into the very essence of faith, so that justification ends up resting on a “double ground”: partly in Christ, and partly in something within us.

This subtle but dangerous shift undermines the good news of sola fide. For the Reformers, faith justifies precisely because it is empty—it looks away from self and receives Christ alone. To smuggle inherent love or obedience into the definition of faith is to relapse into Rome’s doctrine of fīdēs cāritāte formāta (“faith formed by love”), which the Reformers explicitly rejected.

This Friday, October 31, is Reformation Day. As we remember Luther’s stand for justification by faith alone, Hunsinger’s critique reminds us that the battle for the gospel did not end in the 16th century. It must still be defended wherever the essence of faith is confused with the fruit of faith.

What follows is a detailed analysis of Hunsinger’s critique of why Edwards’s dispositional soteriology fails, why his critique is correct, and why any claim that “love belongs to the essence of saving faith” fatally compromises the gospel of justification by faith alone.

Why Hunsinger Is Right Against Edwards and Why “Love in the Essence of Faith” Collapses Sola Fide

What Hunsinger shows Edwards does

1. Moves from Christ-alone to a “double ground.”
Edwards keeps Christ as the primary ground of justification but adds a secondary and derivative ground in us—faith as a “habit,” “qualification,” and “inherent holiness” that is “lovely,” “approvable,” and “rewardable.” This makes faith not only the instrument receiving Christ, but also a virtue in us that helps explain why God accepts us. That is alien to the Reformation.

2. Slides toward congruent merit.
By treating faith’s “fitness/beauty” as something God fittingly rewards with salvation (even if only “indirectly” and “derivatively”), Edwards reintroduces a Thomistic idea of rewardable virtue. Hunsinger’s point: once faith’s virtue counts as a reason (even a secondary one) for acceptance, you’ve smuggled merit back in the door.

3. Turns “inherent” into “saving” righteousness.
Against Turretin’s axiom—“what is inherent is opposed to what is imputed”—Edwards lets inherent holiness carry saving weight (a secondary basis “on account of which” God accepts us). That contradicts the classic Reformed claim that only Christ’s alien righteousness, imputed, grounds acceptance; our inherent righteousness is fruit, never ground.

4. Makes justification partly active, not wholly passive.
Luther: justification is passive from start to finish. Edwards’s secondary ground assigns saving significance to our renewed qualities, making justification partly rest on what is in us post-faith.

5. Redefines union with Christ in a merely “legal” key.
Instead of Calvin’s mystical, personal union (Christ gives Himself with His benefits), Edwards treats union largely as a legal relation and then speaks of “something really in believers” (a disposition) that functions in justification. The focus shifts from Someone (Christ for us) to something (a quality in us).

6. Reads James as adding works to justification’s efficacy.
Where Reformed orthodoxy says works demonstrate (declare) faith, Edwards says they also complete faith’s efficacy as its outward expression. That collapses the declaratory/contributory line and edges toward “justification by disposition” (faith and obedience as one saving habit).

Why this sinks the “love-in-faith’s-essence” claim

Making love belong to the essence of saving faith follows Edwards’s move: it treats love not merely as fruit/evidence but as part of what justifies (even if “secondarily”). That’s Rome’s fīdēs cāritāte formāta in Reformed dress.

The consistent Reformation testimony is this: Faith justifies only as the empty hand receiving Christ. Love is necessary as fruit of union, but it never enters the instrument—still less the ground—of justification.

When believers come to a proper understanding of sola fide as their gospel—the light of their minds and the life of their souls—they will have a firm assurance of their salvation. This was the pastoral heartbeat of the Reformation: to liberate consciences from despair by grounding assurance in Christ alone, received by faith alone.

Answering the prooftexts raised against sola fide

1 Corinthians 16:22 — “If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed.”
Paul gives a test of life, not a definition of the instrument of justification. The absence of love reveals the absence of true faith; it does not turn love into faith’s essence. Root vs. fruit.

1 John 4:19 — “We love because he first loved us.”
The causality runs from God’s prior love—received by faith—to our responsive love. John does not ground acceptance on our love; he displays its inevitability as the effect of regeneration.

Romans 4:5 — guarding sola fide.
Scripture explicitly affirms that God justifies the ungodly—those who do not love him at all: “But to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” This text safeguards the Reformation order: faith alone receives Christ’s righteousness; love follows as its necessary fruit, not its essence.

The Reformed guardrails Hunsinger reaffirms (over against Edwards)

• Imputed vs. inherent: Only imputed righteousness grounds acceptance; inherent righteousness is excluded from that office.

• Passive righteousness: Justification remains passive for the believer—always and entirely—because it rests wholly on Christ for us.

• Union with Christ: We receive Christ Himself and therefore His benefits; union with Christ brings us into fellowship with a person—Christ—not with some virtue in us.

This is precisely what the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571) affirm as the Anglican confession of faith:

Article XI. Of the Justification of Man.
We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

Article XII. Of Good Works.
Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.

Article XIII. Of Works before Justification.
Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School-authors say) deserve grace of congruity: yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.

These Articles agree in total with Hunsinger’s critique of Edwards: justification is by faith alone, good works are the fruit but not the ground of justification, and works before grace cannot earn or deserve anything from God.

Further Implications

At the heart of this debate lies the critical difference between fruit and root. Love, obedience, and holiness are indispensable evidences of new life in Christ. Yet they are never the essence of saving faith, nor do they serve as any part of the ground of justification. To make them so—as Edwards’s dispositional soteriology does—is to place renewed qualities within us alongside Christ’s imputed righteousness as a basis for acceptance with God. This not only distorts the gospel but also threatens to unsettle consciences, shifting assurance from Christ’s finished work to our imperfect love.

The Reformers drew a bright and necessary line: what is inherent in us can never be confused with what is imputed to us in Christ. Justification is wholly passive, resting only on the alien righteousness of Christ received by faith alone. Union with Christ brings us into fellowship with a person—Christ—not with some virtue in us.

Texts such as 1 Corinthians 16:22, 1 John 4:19, and Romans 4:5 underline this truth. Love is the inevitable fruit of regeneration and union with Christ. But to confuse fruit with essence is to collapse sola fide.

Conclusion

Hunsinger’s careful critique of Edwards exposes the dangers of dispositional soteriology. Once love, obedience, or any inherent virtue becomes part of the essence of saving faith, justification is no longer grounded solely in Christ’s imputed righteousness. The gospel is distorted, consciences are unsettled, and assurance is lost.

But when believers come to a proper understanding of sola fide, they find freedom and confidence: God justifies the ungodly through faith alone in Christ alone. Love, obedience, and holiness inevitably follow, but only as fruit—never as the root.

Reformation Day calls us to remember that the church stands or falls on justification. Hunsinger’s critique of Edwards reminds us that even brilliant theologians can blur this line. The need for clarity, courage, and confession is as urgent today as it was in 1517.