(page numbers refer to George Marsden, "Challenging the
Presumptions of the Age," in The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards.)
I. Summary of Concerning the End for which God Created the World
100 everything is related because everything is related to God
102 modern thinkers start with humanity rather than God, which is backwards in Edwards'
view
103 God creates to extend the internal love of the persons of the Trinity outward
103 Edwards: "The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are
refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in
God, and to God."
103 Marsden: "It is as though the universe is an explosion of God's glory. Perfect
goodness, beauty, and love radiate from God and draw creatures to share ever increasingly
in the Godhead's joy and delight."
104 The ultimate end of creation is union in love between God and loving creatures.
This is similar to Aquinas' beatific vision of the highest fulfillment of human happiness.
II. What ideas was Edwards reacting against?
104 Marsden: "His object was to establish an analysis in which, if one granted
merely a few essential principles of Christian theology, one would be forced to reconsider
the whole direction of 18th century moral philosophy."
105 Marsden: "we must view Edwards and The Nature of True Virtue in their
international context. In broadest terms, the British moralists since the time of John
Locke [1632-1704] were attempting to establish a new moral philosophy as a science that
would be the equivalent to the new natural philosophy, or natural science. True to the
spirit of the age, modern thinkers were striving to establish firm foundations for
knowledge that would be universally valid for all humans. Christendom, ever since the
Reformation, had been torn by the absolutist dogmas of warring religious authorities. The
grand hope of the modern moral philosophers was that they could discover universally valid
moral standards with which they could adjudicate competing absolute claims and in effect
stand above them."
105 human beings are endowed with powers to know and obey moral laws that are built
into nature
105 nature is normative for understanding the self and self-understanding is normative
for morality
106 the 3rd Earl of Shaftsbury argued that there is a "natural moral sense"
in human beings
106 Shaftsbury's views were developed extensively by Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746);
Hutcheson was Edwards' main target of criticism
106 Marsden: "Hutcheson argued that the moral sense, also called 'conscience,' was
closely analogous to a sense of beauty."
106 Hutcheson: "What is approved by this sense we count as right and beautiful,
and call it virtue; what is condemned, we count as base and deformed
and vicious."
106 Marsden: "For Edwards, a truly spiritual sense of beauty was what
distinguished the regenerate from the unregenerate. Hutcheson, by contrast, had been
arguing that all of humankind were endowed by their Creator with a sense of moral
beauty sufficient to lead them, if they followed its dictates, to a life of virtue for
which they were also promised eternal rewards."
108 Marsden: "Edwards wrote to John Erskine that he had read Lord Kames' Essay
on the Principles of Morality (1751) 'and also that book of Mr. David Hume's which
you speak of [A Treatise on Human Nature]. I am glad of an opportunity to read
such corrupt books; especially when written by men of considerable genius; that I may have
an idea of the notions that prevail in our nation."
108 Marsden: "he was laying gunpowder at the foundations of the entire project of
all the celebrated moral philosophers of the day."
III. Summary of The Nature of True Virtue
108-109 Edwards: "nothing is of the nature
of true virtue, in which God is not the first and the last" [p. 26 in
text]
109 God is love and the source of all love;
true human love resonates with God's love; to be united in love with the Godhead means to
love what God loves, all beings (being in general)
Edwards: "Because God is not only
infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the
universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty;
from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly
dependent; of whom, and through whom, and to whom is all being and
all perfection; and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sum and comprehension of
all existence and excellence: much more than the sun is the fountain and summary
comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day." [p. 15]
109 Marsden: "True virtue, or universal
benevolence, is possible only if one's heart is united to God, who is love and beauty and
the source of all love and beauty."
110 love of family, community, or nation are
all forms of self-love, not true virtue
110 Marsden: "Humans naturally admire
the harmonies of benevolence on a purely human scale. The more complete the harmonies, the
more they admire them. Yet if such benevolences, however attractive in themselves, are out
of tune with the great symphony of God's love that animates the universe, they are
ultimately discordant, rather than truly beautiful."
111 Edwards believes people have an inbuilt
moral faculy, conscience; this is of value but it is not true virtue.
112 human loyalties can usurp loyalty to God
112 Marsden: "Edwards was insisting that
the only important question in life is whether one is united to God or in rebellion
against God. If united with God (which for Edwards was always an ongoing process), then
one will learn to love all that God loves--which includes benevolence and justice toward
others. God's happiness will be our happiness." [notice the similarity to Aquinas'
emphasis on happiness]
112 Marsden: "True love is the widest
possible affection for persons and all that is good (being) in the universe. It is doing
good for its own sake--for its beauty. Merely natural 'virtue,' which superficially may
look very similar, is ultimately motivated by humans' natural inclinations to love
themselves and their own kind.
112-113 Marsden: "In The Nature of
True Virtue--an intellectual gem by any standard--Edwards was challenging the project
that dominated Western thought, and eventually much of world thought, for the next two
centuries. The grand ideal of that hopeful era was that humans would find it possible to
establish on scientific principles a universal system of morality that would bring to an
end the destructive conflicts that had plagued human history. Only after the first half of
the twentieth century, when the clashes of such ideals had led to the bloodiest era in
history and threatened to annihilate humanity, did much of the faith in that project
collapse, even though there were no clear alternatives to put in its place. Edwards'
recognition of the vast importance of the assumptions that lay behind such efforts and his
insight into their faults arose, not because he was so far ahead of his time, but because
his rigorous Calvinism--and his position in a distant province--put him in a position to
scrutinize critically his own era. His theological commitments alerted him to the
momentous implications of trends that were already formidable in Britain when he first
came on the intellectual scene and that during his lifetime advanced rapidly, even in New
England. Edwards was a thoroughly eighteenth-century figure who used many of the
categories and assumptions of his era to criticize its trends. Though he may have
underestimated the short-term benefits of the emerging culture, he had genuine insight
into the emptiness of its highest hopes."
3 True virtue most essentially consists in benevolence to being in general.
14 true virtue must chiefly consist in love to God; the being of beings, infinitely the
greatest and best
17 If true virtue consists partly in a respect to God, then doubtless it consists
chiefly in it.
23 divine virtue must consist in the mutual love and friendship which subsists
eternally and necessarily between the several persons in the Godhead
24-25 But the true goodness of a thing, must
be its agreeableness to its end, or its fitness to answer the design for which it
was made. Therefore, they are good moral agents, whose temper of mind, or propensity of
heart, is agreeable to the end for which God made moral agents. [cf. Aquinas]
25-26 true virtue is theological,
it is grace and holiness in a person that comes from God [God]
[modern religion and morality debate]
[Edwards proposes not a divine command theory
but a divine love theory; human love for God and all creatures in response to God's love
for us.]
48 we often love others out of self-love;
this is not true virtue [mutual egocentricity] [self]
61 natural conscience is a consciousness of
being inconsistent with oneself
88 private affections extend themselves to a
considerable number of people; we think this is true virtue [society]
95 even self-love restrains from acts of true
wickedness, though it is the source of all wickedness
101 every being that has understanding and
will necessarily seeks happiness [Aquinas]
does it make sense to "privatize" religion if God is the ground of all
being?
does it make sense to "secularize" ethics if true virtue is human love in
response to God's love?
why does Edwards not refer to scripture?
in what ways does Edwards agree with or depart from Aquinas?
how can a critique of "empire" be drawn from Edwards' thought?
what implications are there in Edwards for the just war / pacifism
debate?
how could Edwards have been a slave owner?