According to Jonathan Edwards, God is Trinity (three in one, one in three), and the Trinity is relational in his love. Because the Trinity derives from the divine community’s self-understanding in God, God communicates this love to the whole creation, offering it a chance to be a part of this divine life of love.
Nature is created by God out of his divine fullness, and Nature acts as a sign of the divine reality. Nature's message has been distorted by the corruption of creation, and it needs revelation to clarify its message.
Likewise, the ethical life is founded on agreement with God. Virtue is derived from selfless love: first from God, then for others. Sin is the refusal to consent to God's Being and purposes; it insists on a private vision of its own. As we consent more to God’s desires, we develop habits of character, discovering more of whom we really are and are intended to be. To understand how this happens, one needs to understand the relationship of the mind, will, and affections, which for Edwards are three ways of looking at an integrated whole.
Because God is relational, the mind and creation are also relational; they are designed to work together. Our delight comes in discerning this pattern of relationship. The will is not a free faculty. It always acts on the mind’s understanding. When the mind perceives something as its greatest good, the will chooses that good. God gives to the understanding redeemed affections.
The affections are necessary to grasp anything. If you understand something only mentally, you have not really understood. As one loves relationally, one truly only understands God, truth, goodness, and beauty.
At the center, then, of Edwards’ thought is a profound cosmic aesthetic of relationship and selfless community. God’s beauty is an objective reality which we always experience subjectively. True beauty is achieved by consenting to God, who offers us perfect delight, experienced both as an excellent image in Christ (offered in the natural world and human beings) and as an indwelling principle in the Holy Spirit. God’s beauty governs and redeems the world.
As we consent to God’s love, we experience relationship with him and his community of followers, who ultimately act upon that love in both this world and in the infinite, progressive capacity of heaven.
(This is taken from a webpage of mine. If you're interested in a more thorough breakdown of Edwards' system, go to: http://www.dbu.edu/mitchell/edwardsi.htm .)
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