Kevin Vail H802 – Dr. Carol Johnston 5/04/11J. Edwards – The End for Which God Created the World

The Life of Jonathan Edwards

If George Washington, or perhaps Thomas Jefferson, was the political father of our country, Jonathan Edwards was its theological father. Though he would die nearly 20 years before “the shot heard ‘round the world” was fired, he championed the ideals which inspired our “little experiment” in constitutional republicanism. He was the fifth out of eleven children, born Oct. 5, 1703 in East Windsor, Connecticut, to a prominent Congregationalist minister. He attended Yale University, where he studied Locke and Newton. He completed a Master of Arts at Yale in 1724 and was appointed to serve as minister at Northampton in 1725, one of the largest congregations in New England at the time. He married, Sarah Pierpont, also from a prominent New England family, in 1727 and remained devoted to her for the rest of his life. In his time at Northampton, Edwards wrote several scholastic treatises, commentaries on scripture and innumerable letters and sermons and he was a key figure in the First Great awakening. He lost his position at Northampton in 1749 over a controversy involving church membership and participation in communion. He chose to accept an appointment to the small church at Stockbridge and pursued missionary work with the Housatonic Indians from 1750-1757, when he was installed as the President of the College of New Jersey (Princeton Univ.). He would only serve a month of his term, however, before he succumbed to small pox as a result of an inoculation for the disease.

His writings cover nearly every topic in biblical, systematic and pastoral theology. He is perhaps best known for his 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and has unfairly been portrayed as the archetypal “fire and brimstone” preacher which modern man cannot tolerate. Contrary to this caricature, I have found in Edwards a “God-entranced vision of all things” and a concern for the spiritual health of his congregants that drove him to the point of physical exhaustion. Edwards’ most-well known works include: “Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God”, “Freedom of the Will”, “The Nature of True Virtue”, “Original Sin”, “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections” and the work which I will be focusing on in the third part of this essay, “A Treatise Concerning the End for Which God Created The World ”. He also left us detailed journals, letters and sermons covering his entire life and thought. These writings have been collected into various sets over the years, many of which are now out of copyright and available freely in PDF format on the internets. I have used the 1834, 2 volume collection edited by Edward Hickman in all my studies thus far.

Edwards was a key figure in the First Great Awakening which swept New England in the 1730’s and 1740’s. The revival began in Edward’s church in 1733. The used the opportunity to study in detailed the process of conversion which he published in 1737 under the title of A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton. He later found himself defending the revival against more conservative Puritan ministers. This defense is contained primarily in his famous Treatise on Religious Affections, where Edwards is careful to mark out a via media on the role of emotions in worship and the Christian life. He rejected a more radical subjective view which equated Christianity with great

Kevin Vail H802 – Dr. Carol Johnston 5/04/11J. Edwards – The End for Which God Created the World

expression of emotion and the alleged bestowal of spiritual gifts but he also rejected the position of his more rationalist opponents who saw emotional outpourings as a distraction and of no value to the Christian life.

The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was trained in the philosophies of the Enlightenment and deployed those tools in defending an orthodox Westminster Calvinism. Students of philosophy are forever classifying ideas and writers by period and school. By those categories Edwards was a Lockean idealist, an occasionalist and a mental phenomenalist. He defended a species of theological determinism which believed that indeterminism is incompatible with our dependence on God and hence with his sovereignty. If our responses to God's grace are contra-causally free, then our salvation depends partly on us and God's sovereignty isn't “absolute and universal.” His core presuppostions would appear to include God's absolute sovereignty, the principle of sufficient reason, the nature of motivation, and God's foreknowledge. Edwards' occasionalism, idealism, and mental phenomenalism provide a philosophical interpretation of God's absolute sovereignty: God is the only real cause and the only true substance.

Edward’s occasionalism distinguishes between a real or true cause in the “vulgar” sense. The latter is “that, after or upon the existence of which, or the existence of it after such a manner, the existence of another thing follows”. Vulgar causes aren't real causes, however. In the first place, so-called second causes are spatially or temporally distinct from their effects, and “no [real] cause can produce effects in a time and place on which itself is not”. In the second, real causes necessitate their effects and second causes do not. “It don't at all necessarily follow,” for example, “that because there was…color, or resistance,…or thought, or any other dependent thing at the last moment, that therefore there shall be the like at the next”. ). Finally, if second causes were real causes they would be sufficient to produce their effects. If they were sufficient, however, then God's activity would be redundant and it is not. Unlike second causes, God's causal activity meets all three conditions. Since God is not in time or space, there is no temporal or spatial separation between his activity and its effects. Since God is essentially omnipotent, his will is necessarily effective; it is logically impossible for him to will s and s not take place. The third condition is also met. Because God is omnipotent he doesn't need the cooperation of other causal powers to produce his effects. And because sovereignty belongs to him alone he doesn't share his causal power with others. God's decrees are thus fully sufficient for their effects. God alone, then, is the only real cause.

Edwards' arguments for idealism are similar to (but apparently uninfluenced by) Berkeley's. In his essay “The Mind”, Edwards writes, “nothing has existence anywhere else…but either in created or uncreated consciousness.” It follows that from this “the material universe exists only in the mind;” and “the existence of all corporeal things is only ideas”. The idea of a body can be resolved into ideas of color and resistance. Solidity is resistance, while motion is “the communication of this resistance from space to space.” Following the idealist model of Descartes, Edwards agrees that colors exist only in minds. ‘Resistance’ refers either to instances in which one body resists another or to a power, namely, a body's disposition to resist other bodies. The first is a mode or property of ideas; it is ideas which are “resisted…move and stop, and rebound.” So instances of resistance are qualities of ideas and the power of resistance is a

Kevin Vail H802 – Dr. Carol Johnston 5/04/11J. Edwards – The End for Which God Created the World

stable divine intention to act in certain ways. Resistance, therefore, exists only in relation to minds. Since the idea of a body can be reduced to ideas of color and resistance, and color and resistance have only mental existence, “the world is…an ideal one”

Phenomenonalists argue that knowledge is limited to phenomena including (a) physical phenomena or the totality of objects of actual and possible perception and (b) mental phenomena, the totality of objects of introspection. Phenomenalism asserts one of two premises: it either (a) denies a reality behind the phenomena), or (b) expressly affirms the reality of things-in-themselves but denies their knowability. Edwards' mental phenomenalism is a natural extension of his occasionalism and views on substance. If God is the only real cause of spatio-temporal phenomena, he is the only real cause of “thoughts” or “perceptions.” If a substance is what “subsists by itself,” “stands underneath,” and “keeps up” a set of properties, then a mental substance can only be what subsists by itself, stands underneath, and keeps up mental properties. It follows that the concept of mental substance either denotes nothing or refers to God's causal activity. “What we call spirit,” then, “is nothing but a composition and series of perceptions [mental events]…connected by…laws”. Mental and physical substance are thus identical with God's causal production of the mental events constituting minds and the sensible ideas or “sensations” which constitute bodies “according to…methods and laws ” which he has freely established. God is thus the only true substance as well as the only true cause.

Dissertation on the End for Which God Created the World (1765)

The treatise is divided into two large sections with several subsection division each. The first being arguments from reason (i.e. logic) and the second being arguments from scripture. He writes in a very scholastic style, popular among Enlightenment theologians and philosophers.

He titles his first section “What reason dictates concerning this affair” and it is further subdivided into 4 subsections. His primary purpose here is to provide a prologmena of sorts. He is concerned primarily to analyze the idea of teleology in general. He distinguishes between various types of “ends” (τελος).

Ultimate end: that which is valued on its own account. Opposite of a subordinate end. Chief end: most valued, most sought after by the agent. Opposite of an inferior end. Subordinate end: that which is sought as a means to a further end Inferior end: that which is not valued or sought after by the agent

The second section is much larger than the first and contains seven subsections. It is the meat of the treatise in which Edwards argues, God's rectitude and holiness “chiefly consists in a respect or regard to himself, infinitely above his regard to all other beings” and that, as a consequence, his works must be “so wrought as to show this supreme respect to himself”

God's ultimate aim in all his works must therefore be himself. Edwards concludes that he creates the world for his own glory. But Edwards also believed that because the essence of goodness is to communicate good for it own sake, “happiness is the end of the creation”

Kevin Vail H802 – Dr. Carol Johnston 5/04/11J. Edwards – The End for Which God Created the World

God's glory is defined as “the emanation and true external expression of God's internal glory and fullness.” It includes (1) “the exercise of God's perfections to produce a proper effect,” (2) “the manifestation of his internal glory to created understandings,” (3) “the communication of the infinite fullness of God to the creature,” and (4) “the creature's high esteem of God, love to God, and complacence and joy in God; and the proper exercises and expressions of these”

In pursuing his own glory, God thus takes both himself and the creature's good as ultimate aims. Happiness consists in the knowledge and love of God, and joy in him. The creature's happiness is an ultimate end because it is included in God's ultimate end, namely, the communication of his internal glory “ad extra;” rather than being a means to God's glory, it is part of it.

An apparent consequence is that God must create a world to display his glory. End of Creation contends both that God's perfections include “a propensity of nature to diffuse of his own fullness” and that it isn't “possible for him to be hindered in the exercise of his goodness and his other perfections in their proper effect.” It follows that God must diffuse his own fullness, i. e., God must create. Edwards also appears committed to the claim that God necessarily creates this world. God necessarily does what is “fittest and best.” It is thus necessarily true that God creates the best possible world. Now God has created this world. Hence, it is the best possible world. ‘Being the best possible world’ is an essential property of whatever world has it, however. It is therefore necessarily true that this world is the best possible world. It follows that it is necessarily true that God creates the best world.