Jonathan Edwards and the Excellencies of God
Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), Puritan pastor and theologian. Graduated from Yale in 1720 and, in 1726, became assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard at Northampton. Three years later, Edwards succeeded Stoddard. His preaching was the occasion of a religious revival in 1734 from which is generally dated the beginning of the Great Awakening. A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections offers, in the light of the revival an analysis of religious belief with special reference to the affective, emotional component. He offers both an appreciation of the role of intense feeling in religion and criteria for evaluating its manifestations and controlling excesses.
In 1750, after a lengthy controversy, he was forced to resign from Northampton as the congregation rejected his attempts to return to a stricter code regarding membership and admission to communion. He took up a call to the frontier town of Stockbridge where ministry to the Native American population formed part of his pastoral care. His life in Stockbridge, with his wife and now seven children, included extensive theological writing including defences of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and the extraordinary treatises On True Virtue and On God's End in Creation. His notebooks include remarkable speculations toward a theology of nature, governed by his interest in aesthetics. Sadly, his enormous output of sermons and his theological views in general are known mainly through "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," for Edwards, a very rare piece of hell-fire preaching.
The College of New Jersey - later known as Princeton - invited him to accept the office of President in 1757. A long-time enthusiast for natural science, Edwards agreed to a smallpox inoculation during the following year. He died of the complications.
summary of material omitted from lecture...
The Dynamic Eschatology
(see final extracts in handout)
Supreme regard to God's perfections as communicated requires their fullest possible communication and God's fullest enjoyment of them. Hence Edwards' dynamic eschatology: infinite communion, infinite unifying. The image of asymptotic lines, however, has its limitations. We may be misled by its spatiality - always proceeding never arriving - into conceiving of this as a doctrine of eternal frustration. Another way of making Edwards' point, however, is to remember that to be finite is, ontologically, to be a receiver. The doctrine of eternal consummation preserves the creatureliness of the creature, that is, it's identity as one who receives. There is no point at which the receiver ceases to be so, there is no point in which the divine life is "fully bestowed." Given the infinity of God's fullness, if there were a point at which the creature had "received all" then the creature would have become God and, thereby, would be lost in God, would have ceased to be. Furthermore, this would, in Edwards' scheme amount to a diminishment of the divine purpose as the emanation of God ad extra would come to an end in any creature that ceased to be a creature. On the other hand, the dynamism of an eternal receptivity enables the creature to image God always more perfectly. The reception of God's fullness is, at the same time, a giving back to God - a reflection. Thus the creature, in its eternal and expanding reflection of God's glory, mirrors the eternal and expanding giving which is the divine life.
Jonathan Edwards, Concerning the End for Which God Created the World - Outline
1. Introduction: "Ultimate" ends
1. Ultimate ends distinguished from subordinate ends
2. Ultimate ends distinguished from chief ends
3. Original and consequential ultimate ends distinguished
1. The distinction (i.e. independent of or dependent upon particular conditions)
2. With reference to God's creation and providence
2. The Teaching of Reason concerning God's End in Creation
1. General or Formal Considerations
1. Any posited end must be compatible with God's infinity and transcendence
2. Must be worthy and valuable in itself and capable of attainment through divine operation
3. Any a priori end superior in value to all others must be worthy to be his last and highest end
4. The possibility that God is his own end in creation
(1) If such is possible then God's "rectitude" requires it
(2) In principle, God's "worth" outweighs all that exists in dependence upon God
5. Whatever God values as the end of creation, God values as an ultimate end not as a means
6. Whatever follows from creation and is unqualifiedly good in itself is to be acknowledged as an ultimate divine end in creation.
2. Unqualifiedly Good Consequences of Creation
1. Effects that manifest God's excellencies
2. Effects that produce the knowledge of those excellencies
3. Effects that produce the love of those excellencies
4. Effects that realize God's eternal disposition to the communication of those excellencies
3. How God is His own End in such Effects
1. In the exercise of his attributes, God delights in them and, therefore, in himself
2. In causing knowledge and love of his excellencies, God delights in them and, therefore, in himself
3. In exercising his disposition to communicate himself, God makes himself his own end
(1) Originally, God's creating involves regard for his own excellencies as communicated
(2) The communication of God's excellencies consists in creatures participating in them
a. Creaturely knowledge of God is a participation in the divine self-knowledge
b. Creaturely virtue and holiness is a participation in the divine virtue and holiness
c. Creaturely happiness is a participation in the divine joy
(3) God's self-communication is the process whereby creatures are eternally drawn closer into oneness with God.
4. Some Objections
1. Concerning the Divine self-sufficiency
(1) Objection: Above account incompatible with God's self-sufficiency
(2) Answer:
a. God's delight in the creature's good as the effect of his self-communication is entirely compatible with his self-sufficiency because this delight begins and ends in God's activity alone.
b. The objection refutes itself since, if admitted, it disallows any talk of God's willing or purposing that is not wholly figurative.
c. Only the claim that God makes himself his end in creation preserves the divine self-sufficiency. Is if the creature was God's end, then the latter - and, therefore God - would be dependent upon the creature.
2. Concerning the Divine Love
(1) Objection: Above account attributes selfishness to God
(2) Answer:
a. Selfishness is an overvaluation of self-worth: as the supremely good, God cannot be the object of overvaluation.
b. As I am neither possessed of nor the source of all goodness, I can pursue my private interests at variance with the public good (selfishness). As the supreme good and the creation's sole "fountain of being and good," God's good cannot be in conflict with that of creation.
c. If God is the supreme good then his valuation of himself and his seeking the good of creatures coincide.
3. Concerning the Divine Majesty
(1) Objection: to seek the knowledge and love of his excellencies by creatures is below the divine dignity
(2) Answer:
a. If God's loves his own excellencies then God must also love the love of those excellencies. As "Universal Being," God is the object of true virtue ("general benevolence") and, therefore, God's regard of virtue is love of love to himself i.e. a proper self-regard.
b. If what God does proceeds from love (which Edward's objectors agree) then it follows that God must love the return of love. Love of its nature seeks a response in kind, no less in situations of inequality.
c. Delight in regard is only unworthy when the regard is undeserved or wrongheaded.
4. On the Divine Praises
Objection: If what God does, he does from a regard for his own glory, then our debt of gratitude is thereby reduced.
Answer: Obligation to gratitude would only be lessened if the good were less, or the disposition of God were less good or less free. But, the good God seeks in creation of creatures is an infinite good, that is, an eternal drawing-into-one of God and the creature. Also, creation is the enlargement of the divine goodness - not its restriction - and originates entirely in God and thus is completely free and not indebted to creatures.
3. The Teaching of Scripture concerning God's End in Creation
1. Scripture represents God as making himself his own last end in creation.
2. Hermeneutical Considerations
1. What is spoken of as the end of God's providence in general is God's last end.
2. What is spoken of as the end of some but may be validly generalized across all of God's works is God's last end.
3. What is spoken of most frequently as the end of God's works of providence may be favored as God's last end.
4. What is spoken of as the end of the moral part of God's creation is God's last end.
5. What end is spoken of in connection with God's chief works of providence may be taken as disclosing God's last end.
6. What end is spoken of in connection with God's chief works of providence with reference to the moral world may be taken as disclosing God's last end.
7. What appears as God's end with reference to the righteous may be taken as disclosing God's last end.
8. What God requires the moral world to seek as their good may be supposed as God's last end.
9. That in which the righteousness of the righteous is said to consist may be taken as God's last end.
10. What the saints sought as the end of their actions and words may be taken as God's last end.
11. What the saints desire as their chief end may be regarded as God's last end.
12. What was sought by Jesus Christ as his last end may be taken as God's last end.
3. According to Scripture, God's Glory is an Ultimate End of Creation
4. Other Ultimate Ends spoken of in Scripture
1. God's "Name" as the ultimate end of Creation.
2. Making his perfections known as the ultimate end.
3. God's praise as the ultimate end.
5. The Good of Creatures as God's Ultimate End according to Scripture
6. The Meaning of God's "Glory" and God's "Name"
1. Glory as God's internal fullness
2. Glory as the emanation of that fullness
3. Glory as the knowledge of that fullness
4. Glory as the love of that fullness expressed in praise
5. God's "name" as synonymous with God's "glory."
7. God's One End in Creation
1. "Glory of God" is the most apt name for God's last end.
2. "Glory" refers to God's internal fullness; the emanation of that fullness; and the knowledge and love of that fullness: all of which are the one end viewed from different aspects and relations.
3. God's regard to the creature may not be opposed to God's self-regard: creaturely knowledge and love they consists in the emanation of God's excellency and its remanation back to its divine source. God is thus the beginning, middle, and end of the entire movement of grace.
4. This is seen most clearly in the eternal destiny of the saints: objects of an infinite self-giving, the goal of which is union - a goal never achieved but always more fully approximated.