The first time I met Jonathan Edwards was over a bacon cheeseburger at Wendy’s. He was blowing my mind that day. I had never in my life heard of a God-centered God! Needless to say there was more meat in the writings of Edwards than there was on that hamburger I was eating. Edwards illuminated the glory of God for me in ways that I had never before seen, even as I sat there in that dingy fast food joint. Furthermore he helped me to see that because of the true beauty of his glory and holiness of his nature, God’s glory must be His ultimate purpose in all His acts. This doctrine of God’s God-centeredness has massive implications for my life. If God is God-centered, then I should be God-centered too.
To speak of God’s God-centeredness can make Him seem like a complete narcissist. After all, if any other being were to be so self-consumed we would regard that person as selfish. But Edwards walks us logically through his argument to reveal that if God is the highest good in existence than for God himself to make anything else His ultimate purpose would be to sin. This is what Edwards calls the “Principle of Proportionate Regard.” God must regard as worthy that which is truly worthy. As Edwards says it:
[God’s] moral rectitude…consists in his having infinitely the highest regard to that which is in itself highest and best.
His love to himself…implies a love to whatever is worthy or excellent. (Quoted in McDermott and McClymond, 210)
In one of his Miscellanies he adds that “the excellency of God’s nature appears in that, that he loves and seeks whatever is in itself excellent.” For Edwards God’s self-regard was an ethical issue. God’s holiness and goodness constrain Him to seek His own glory as His ultimate purpose.
In The End for Which God Created the World, Edwards attempts to answer the ultimate “why” question. Why does the world exist? Because it glorifies God more in its existing than in its not existing. God created the world for His own sake. Edwards writes plainly, “God is seeking himself in the creation of the world.” The logic of Edwards is impeccable, if dense, in this work. He argues from the ethical constraint to the creative activity itself. God must make His ultimate end that which is most worthy, namely His glory. In creating He is communicating or diffusing His glory. The communication of His glory is, therefore, the driving force behind His creative activity. He says:
Therefore, to speak strictly according to truth, we may suppose, that a disposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation of his own infinite fullness, was what excited him to create the world; and so, that the emanation itself was aimed at by him as a last end of the creation.
God created the world for the sake of His own glory.
The supremacy of God’s glory had long been the standard Calvinist teaching. It was contrary to the Enlightenment bent of Edwards day which made man’s own happiness supreme, but Edwards sought something more of a via media between the two positions. He could not deny that God sought and delighted in the happiness of His creation, but he could not affirm that man’s happiness superseded God’s own pursuit of His glory. He resolved this tension in his own theology by exploring creation as the “communication” of God.
Edwards thought on the “end of creation” is seen by scholars to have gone through three stages. The first stage supposed that the ultimate end of God in creation was in fact the happiness of humanity. This end was developed in part because Edwards understood God himself could receive nothing from creation itself. God is infinitely perfect, so he cannot be said to receive anything from creation; nothing can add to God’s glory or happiness. So Edwards clarifies:
The notion of God creating the world, in order to receive anything properly from the creature, is not only contrary to the nature of God, but inconsistent with the notion of creation; which implies a being receiving its existence, and all that belongs to it, out of nothing. And this implies the most perfect, absolute, and universal derivation and dependence.
God did not need the world to be happy. Therefore he must have as His primary goal the happiness of humanity.
The need for further development came as Edwards concluded that emanation was also a fundamental drive for God in the creation of the world. Though He did not need the world, He desired to diffuse His glory. In the so-called intermediate stage of Edwards development, he concluded that both human happiness and God’s glory were “ultimate ends.” It was in the final stage that he saw the two concepts merged into one. God’s pursuit of His glory and His pursuit of His creature’s happiness were in fact one and the same.
God’s communication of Himself was the highest good for humanity. As they came to see and rejoice in His glory and goodness they would find true happiness, and as God’s glory was rejoiced in it would further glorify Himself. As John Piper is known to say, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” Or as Edwards said it:
Nor ought God’s glory and the creature’s good to be spoken of as if they were properly and entirely distinct…God in seeking his glory, therein seeks the good of his creatures.
God’s God-centeredness turns out to be far better for us than His man-centeredness.
This was all theologically powerful stuff for a young man sitting in a Wendy’s. I am certain I did not grasp it all at that time. I am certain I do not grasp it all at this time. But it is important not simply because it captures better the truth of God, but it has massive implications for my life. One of the amazing things about reading Edwards is that as heady as he is, he writes always with an eye towards action. To see and understand God’s God-centeredness is to realize the demand upon my own life to be purely God-centered.
The End for which God Created the World was originally intended to followed by Edwards’ work True Virtue. The latter makes frequent reference to the former and both revolve around the similar ethical demand: if God is the highest good then he is to be at the center of all activity. Both for God himself, in the creation of the world, and for man, in his acts of charity. In other words, if God is God-centered, than I should be God-centered too. Edwards’ doctrine of God is important not simply because of what it says about God, but because of how it applies to my life.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 