Can I Love Myself and Glorify God?

ABSTRACT: At the center of Jonathan Edwards’s theology of love was the concept of benevolence to Being in general. Edwards’s careful distinctions between self-love, selfishness, and disinterested benevolence depend on his understanding of God as the fountain of love, which he pours into the hearts of believers and empowers them to return. Self-love, which is the capacity to love or enjoy that which is pleasing, is regenerated by God so that his people are satisfied in him and seek for others to be satisfied in him as well.

In the history of Christianity, few theologians have earned as many nicknames as Jonathan Edwards. By the end of the eighteenth century, Yale President Timothy Dwight called his grandfather “that moral Newton, and that second Paul.”¹ In the nineteenth, Dwight’s student Lyman Beecher called Edwards “the Luther of New England.”² In the twentieth, Richard Niebuhr likened the Northampton pastor to an “American Augustine,” and Robert Jenson called him “America’s Theologian.”³ Welsh minister Martyn Lloyd-Jones labeled Edwards the “Theologian of Revival.”⁴ Even some of Edwards’s detractors have found it irresistible to tag him with a moniker of some kind. Alluding to his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741), one scholar in 1930 titled Edwards “The Fiery Puritan.”⁵

The last nickname may have had the most enduring influence in popular thought. But Edwards spent far more time preaching and writing on the nature of love than he did on the agonies of hell. As philosopher William K. Frankena once noted, “In no field is his power more manifest than in moral philosophy.”⁶ For Edwards, love was more than a command or even “the chief of the affections”; it was the very reason life existed in the first place.⁷ Love was both an ethical and an ontological category, flowing from the nature of God’s very being. In The End for Which God Created the World, Edwards frames personal holiness as a process of “emanation and remanation” of God’s inner-Trinitarian fullness. God communicates his overflowing love to human beings who then, in the exercise of virtue, reflect that love back to God. The enjoyment of triune love is the sum and substance of the Christian life.⁸ God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.⁹

For this reason, one nickname has captured Edwards and his affectionate theology perhaps better than any other: “Theologian of the Great Commandment.” In a 1944 article by that title, Presbyterian scholar Joseph Haroutunian stated, “God blessed Jonathan Edwards with a unique sense and knowledge of His glory. . . . A love of God’s ‘infinite perfections’ is the source of the many sided work of Edwards as a theologian and the clue for understanding both his life and writings.”¹⁰ In short, love of God was the keystone of Edwards’s theology. What separated him from his contemporaries — and, indeed, his own disciples — was his unique ability to explain how a sinner could love his own life enough to give it away, and how a person seeking his highest personal good could in turn love his neighbor as himself. Lying at the intersection of the first and second commandments, the centerpiece of Edwards’s God-centered metaethics was something he called “benevolence to Being in general.” An examination into Edwards’s doctrine of selfless self-love can therefore begin with three B’s: benevolence, being, and beauty.

Metaphysics of Virtue

Edwards preached on moral theology long before writing his famous treatise on virtue. In his 1738 sermon series Charity and Its Fruits, which ethicist Paul Ramsey has called Edwards’s “most important treatment of Christian ethics,” Edwards defined love as “that disposition or affection by which one is dear to another” and “the sum of all virtue.”¹¹ However, in The Nature of True Virtue (1765), Edwards did more than simply describe love; he offered a philosophically credible basis for the first and second commandments.

To demonstrate that naturalized ethics could not properly account for things like goodness and beauty, Edwards took on two of the preeminent moral philosophers of the eighteenth century: the third Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutchison. (Edwards was, after all, nicknamed “the apostle to the Enlightenment.”¹²) Using Hutchison’s model of moral formation for his own purposes, he showed that Hutchison’s notion of “moral sense” was, in the words of one historian, “no more than old-fashioned natural conscience in a new guise.”¹³ Because of original sin and moral inability, what human beings need to be virtuous lies outside them. In Religious Affections (1746), Edwards calls it a “new sense of the heart.”¹⁴

Edwards’s definition of true virtue rests primarily on two concepts: consent and Being in general. “True virtue most essentially consists in benevolence to Being in general. Or perhaps to speak more accurately, it is that consent, propensity and union of heart to Being in general, that is immediately exercised in a general good will.”¹⁵ The theological glue that tied these concepts together, and the principle upon which Edwards hinged his entire conception of being, was beauty.¹⁶ For an act to be virtuous, and thus benevolent, it must be beautiful. “Beauty does not consist in discord and dissent,” Edwards explained, “but in consent and agreement.”¹⁷

Consent

For Edwards, beauty was less about appearances and more about relations. Whereas secondary beauty entails symmetry or proportion between things of similar quality or form and could be found in inanimate objects (such as triangles, chess boards, or trees), primary beauty entails a being consenting to another being — a “cordial,” heartfelt agreement between two wills.¹⁸ Contrary to modern stereotypes of beauty, this spiritual and moral beauty is not subjective but is rather an objective union of mind and heart.

Instead of merely observing beauty, redeemed sinners participate in divine beauty through the ultimate “bond of union” in Edwards’s aesthetic theology: the Holy Spirit. As the love of God personified, the Spirit unites the Father and Son, the human and divine natures in Christ, the sinner to the Savior, and the elect to one another.¹⁹ Through the indwelling of the third divine person, God literally pours his own love into a previously unbelieving heart and makes it beautiful with the very joy and harmony of the Trinity itself (Romans 5:5; John 17:21). In his unpublished treatise on the Trinity, Edwards contends that Christian love is none other than “participation of that same infinite divine love, which is GOD, and in which the Godhead is eternally breathed forth; and subsists in the third person in the blessed Trinity.” The Holy Spirit is God’s love, beauty, and “the summum of all good” given to the believer.²⁰ Therefore, goodness and beauty must come from “the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty” — namely, God, who is “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.”²¹

Sinners are not fountains of love by nature. Like those in Matthew 5:47 who greet only their own brothers, human beings do not possess the inherent ability to love anyone but themselves (or those like themselves). We need supernatural power to look beyond our own “private sphere” and to promote the “public good.”²² A tendency to agree with ourselves is a “natural principle,” Edwards reasoned, but “an agreement or union of heart to the great system, and to God the head of it, who is all and all in it — is a divine principle.”²³ Since the supremely beautiful God agrees with and delights in his triune self, and since it is his fountain-like nature to communicate this eternal glory, God enlarges or repeats his inner-Trinitarian fullness in the creation and salvation of the world, producing “objects of his benevolence” that receive and replicate his love, made beautiful in the exercise of true virtue — his virtue.²⁴

Being in General

The concept of “Being in general” is the ontological construct that allowed Edwards to explain how love of God and love of neighbor could coexist seamlessly in the same heart. (He was, after all, nicknamed the “Theologian of the Heart.”²⁵) All intelligent beings are part of a vast interconnected system of being that Edwards called “the great whole.” Recognizing his place in this “universal system of existence,” a virtuous person cordially consents to the whole and exercises something Edwards calls “benevolence to Being in general.”²⁶

The ethereal concept becomes more concrete once Edwards explains that God is the primary object of virtue because he comprises 99.99999999999[. . .] percent of this system of being. In some sense, he is the system. “God has infinitely the greatest share of existence, or is infinitely the greatest being. So that all other being, even that of all created things whatsoever, throughout the whole universe, is as nothing in comparison of the Divine Being.”²⁷ Further still, he 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.”²⁸

In short, God is greatest both quantitatively and qualitatively. And the greater the being, the greater the beauty.²⁹ He is bigger, better, and more beautiful than we can possibly imagine. As such, he is supremely worthy of our affections. Edwards explains, “True virtue must chiefly consist in love to God; the Being of beings, infinitely the greatest and best of beings.”³⁰ And because virtuous benevolence seeks the highest good of Being in general, it will also “seek the good of every individual being” unless it be inconsistent with the good of the whole.³¹ With a proportionate perspective of one’s place in the cosmos, a right ordering of loves, an increasing impetus toward union of mind and heart, and a greater degree of consent to Being, a grander symmetry and harmony are achieved in the universe.³²

Benevolent and Complacent Love

Just as Edwards distinguished between two kinds of beauty, he also distinguished between two kinds of love. “Love of benevolence is that affection or propensity of the heart to any being, which causes it to incline to its well-being, or disposes it to desire and take pleasure in its happiness.” This kind of love is expressed to things that are not beautiful or prior to their very creation, moving God to bestow existence and beauty upon his creatures (as, for example, in the gospel). Love of complacence, on the other hand, “presupposes beauty, for it is no other than delight in beauty.”³³ In other words, beauty is the goal of benevolent love, and it is the ground of complacent love.

This provides a helpful distinction between the way God looks upon his enemies — loving us while we were yet sinners and inclining himself toward our well-being (love of benevolence) — and the way he loves his children who are indwelled by his Spirit and exercise true virtue (love of complacence). When a benevolent being sees another benevolent being, “this attaches his heart to him, and draws forth greater love to him, than merely his having existence.” Edwards elucidated, “So far as the being beloved has love to Being in general, so far his own being is, as it were, enlarged; extends to, and in some sort comprehends, Being in general: and therefore he that is governed by love to Being in general, must of necessity have complacence in him.”³⁴ The beloved has united himself not only with God but with his fellow beings. Either way, whether delighting in moral beauty or loving someone who lacks moral beauty, true virtue still consists in benevolence to Being in general.

Self-Love vs. Selfishness

But the concept of beauty raises an important question: How can the “natural principle” of self-agreement coalesce with the “divine principle” of consent to Being in general? Put another way, how could Edwards hold to both self-love and “a superior principle of disinterested general benevolence” at the same time?³⁵ The answer lies in Edwards’s distinction between self-love and selfishness. In The Nature of True Virtue, Edwards describes the latter as “when a man is governed by a regard to his own private interest, independent of regard to the public good.” The person possessed by “a selfish, contracted, narrow spirit” is so “influenced by private affection” that he elevates personal desires “above Being in general; and this most naturally tends to enmity against the latter, which is by right the great supreme, ruling, and absolutely sovereign object of our regard.”³⁶ At its core, selfishness is rebellion against God.

However, self-love is quite different. In fact, self-love is axiomatic to human nature, so much so that many of Edwards’s disciples later assumed the principle in their very arguments against it. Simply put, self-love is “a man’s love of his own happiness.” Edwards believed this was a universal human quality because it is merely “a man’s liking, and being suited and pleased in that which he likes, and which pleases him.”³⁷ Self-love is the capacity to love that which is pleasing to us and to be averse to that which is disagreeable to us. For Edwards, this was the same as having a will. “In this sense,” one scholar has summarized, “self-love is essential to and indistinguishable from any love at all.”³⁸ To love another person, human beings must be able to delight in that person’s happiness and well-being. And to delight in anything, they must have the capacity for enjoyment. This is self-love.

“The enjoyment of triune love is the sum and substance of the Christian life.”

Therefore, benevolence is about cherishing the beloved. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). How can we truly love someone, Edwards asked, if we do not derive some kind of pleasure from loving them? “A benevolent propensity of heart is exercised, not only in seeking to promote the happiness of the being towards whom it is exercised, but also in rejoicing in his happiness.”³⁹ When applied to Almighty God, the fountain of all beauty and being, we find our highest good and our greatest joy in loving him and being loved by him, consenting to the “head of the system, and the chief part of it.”⁴⁰ After all, if an infinitely great God did not elicit our enjoyment from loving him, would he really be worthy of our affections? Edwards answered no.

For this reason, Edwards was unwilling to pit love of God against self-love, as if one were antithetical or even superior to the other. Instead, according to Edwards, “one entered into” the other. In Miscellanies 530, he explains the relationship further:

Self-love, taken in the most extensive sense, and love to God are not things properly capable of being compared one with another; for they are not opposites or things entirely distinct, but one enters into the nature of the other. . . . Self-love is only a capacity of enjoying or taking delight in anything. Now surely ’tis improper to say that our love to God is superior to our general capacity of delighting in anything.⁴¹

As self-love is nothing more than “a man’s love to his own good,” it is impossible “that a man should delight in any good that is not his own, for to say that would be to say that he delights in that in which he does not delight.”⁴² If someone were to argue, for example, that he does not love his own happiness but the happiness of others, we might then ask if he enjoys seeing the happiness of others. If the answer is yes, then that person has inadvertently acknowledged that he has exercised self-love in his most selfless of actions. It is selfish to seek one’s personal good instead of the public good. It is self-loving to seek one’s good in promoting the public good.

Ultimately, then, love of God is the greatest actualization of self-love because in him, “infinitely the greatest and best of beings,” our benevolence, or our good will, is increased in proportion to his goodness, and our complacence or satisfaction is increased in proportion to his moral beauty. We can find no greater personal happiness because God’s love is inexhaustible. Through Christ’s saving gospel and the indwelling power of the Spirit, the divine benevolence draws forth our affections, and we find more and more delight to the degree of benevolence we in turn exercise, consenting not just to ourselves or to a limited group but to Being in general. We imitate the mutual love and self-giving benevolence of God himself. “This is why the Spirit is the beauty of God,” explain Oliver Crisp and Kyle Strobel. “The Spirit can be called divine beauty because he is the consent of love in God’s life.”⁴³ The more we unite ourselves in heart and mind to the Fountain of Beauty, and the more we give ourselves in love to his image-bearing creatures, the more we consent to the great system of universal existence and participate in the beauty and love of God. For good reason, Edwards was nicknamed “the dialectician of the soul.”⁴⁴

Samuel Hopkins’s ‘Disinterested Benevolence’

But what if the idea of self-love is used to justify self-centeredness? This was the question facing Edwards’s disciples, who inhabited a market-driven world that had begun to believe that personal greed was in the best interest of the economic whole.⁴⁵ Many of the merchants, slave owners, and rationalist clergy of the late eighteenth century were attempting to sanctify and even theologize their selfish behavior. Samuel Hopkins, who lived in Edwards’s home for a time and wrote his first biography, was Edwards’s chief disciple, but he did not share his teacher’s rose-colored view of self-love.⁴⁶ In Hopkins’s mind and in the minds of most “Hopkinsian” or “New Divinity” theologians after him, Edwards’s aesthetic theology of virtue seemed too impractical and not conducive to a life of social activism.

Hopkins believed that the world needed more law and less self-interest. Eventually, he extended the logical implications of Edwards’s idea of disinterested benevolence into the realm of slavery, delivering one of the first anti-slavery addresses in the United States.⁴⁷ But he departed from Edwards in one key respect. “Hopkins’s most important refashioning of Edwards’s definition of true virtue,” notes historian Joseph Conforti, “and Hopkins’s major contribution to an evangelical theology of social reform — consisted of the opposition of disinterested benevolence to self-love.”⁴⁸ In his System of Doctrines, Hopkins described God’s benevolence as “perfectly disinterested, in opposition to self-love or selfishness.”⁴⁹ Disinterested benevolence became, according to another historian, the “centerpiece” of Hopkins’s theology.”⁵⁰

While Hopkins acknowledged some self-regard in the Christian life, he stopped short of calling it self-love, which he equated with selfishness. Instead, he believed that disinterested benevolence rendered the most honor to God.⁵¹ In fact, so committed was Hopkins to the idea of complete disinterestedness that he boldly contended that a Christian must be “willing to be damned for the glory of God.”⁵² To truly love God, he argued, one must completely divest himself of any and all self-regard and be willing to eternally suffer in hell for God’s sake. Instead of loving God by delighting supremely in him, we are to love God by being willing to suffer eternally without him.

Delighting in the True Good

Rarely overlooking a possible rebuttal, Edwards had anticipated just such an extreme view of benevolence. According to Edwards, a willingness to be damned for the glory of God was not only nonsensical (positing a hypothetical love to God in a place where none existed); it was also humanly impossible. In Miscellanies 530, Edwards writes, “’Tis impossible for any person to be willing to be perfectly and finally miserable for God’s sake.” Even if someone were to voluntarily sacrifice all physical, psychological, and emotional good in infernal flame for God’s sake, he would still be doing it for God’s sake. He would be willing to spend eternity without Jesus for Jesus. Even in perdition, the Christian would still be choosing God as his highest good. Someone may be “willing to be deprived of all his own proper, separate good for God’s sake,” Edwards conceded, “but then he is not perfectly miserable, but happy in the delight that he hath in God’s good.”⁵³ Therefore, a believer’s willingness to be damned for God’s glory would only demonstrate the supremacy of God and this person’s joy in him.

For Edwards, the real power of Christ’s love in the redeemed heart shows itself not in a willingness to be damned for God’s glory but in an eagerness to count it all joy when we encounter trials of fiery kinds for Christ’s sake. The person who is ready to spend an eternity in hell for God’s glory has seriously underestimated not the sacrificial spirit of the Christian but the very reason for the sacrifice itself: the infinite worth of God. Where God is still loved, God is still savored.

While Edwards did teach that sinners should consent to the justice of God’s judgment over them before they trusted in his mercy and were pardoned, he considered the “supposition, that a man can be willing to be perfectly and utterly miserable out of love to God, [to be] inconsistent with itself.”⁵⁴ Simply put, there is no amount of agony or torment that can separate us from enjoying the love of God (Romans 8:38–39). True disinterested benevolence springs from benevolence to a soul-saving, not a soul-sacrificing, God.

Lying at the very heart of the first and second commandments, these questions of love, sacrifice, unity, joy, and goodness have not gone away in our own day. And neither have Edwards’s writings. Almost three hundred years later, in a world not too dissimilar from his own Enlightened generation, the “Theologian of the Great Commandment” still offers the church a treasure trove of moral theology with which to discern our own hearts and the heart of God.