Public Theology, Society, and America

Scripture focus

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

Proverbs 14:34 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Older scholarship, typified by Sidney Mead's remark that Edwards separated 'salvation from one's life in the natural world,' assumed Edwards had little interest in civil affairs beyond their bearing on redemption. His occasional sermons for fast and thanksgiving days, along with other writings, tell a different story: Edwards developed an elaborate, carefully reasoned vision for how Christians ought to conduct themselves in public and civic life.

That vision rests on the metaphysics of The Nature of True Virtue (1755) — a treatise that, remarkably, never quotes the Bible. Edwards describes all reality as a vast network in which 'every intelligent being is some way related to Being in general.' Because human beings cannot subsist alone, and because nearly everyone shares a basic moral conscience, aesthetic perception, and elemental religious knowledge, the regenerate and unregenerate can recognize the same moral goals — even though only the regenerate perceive their deepest beauty and ground them in love for the 'Being of beings.'

This shared moral ground grounds real cooperation: Christians are obligated to work for the good of the whole community, including non-Christians. Civil government, Edwards taught, exists because God provides for that common good through magistrates who must act 'as the fathers of the commonwealth,' securing property, protecting rights, and maintaining order — functions that, echoing Hobbes, prevent society from collapsing into a condition 'miserable and intolerable.'

Key points

• Older scholarship assumed Edwards had little interest in civil affairs; his occasional sermons for fast and thanksgiving days show sustained engagement with public and political life.
• In The Nature of True Virtue, a work that never quotes the Bible, Edwards grounded ethics in a metaphysics of being in which every entity is related to every other.
• Edwards argued the regenerate and unregenerate share enough common moral sense, conscience, and aesthetic perception to cooperate toward shared civic goods, even though only the regenerate perceive 'true virtue' fully.
• H. Richard Niebuhr, who credited Edwards for his own theological orientation, later drew on Edwards's language of 'universal being' to describe ultimate reality in terms that could resonate beyond explicitly Christian audiences.
• Edwards described civil magistrates as owing their communities the same watchful care a father owes his family, charged with securing property, protecting rights, and maintaining order.

A line worth remembering

Every intelligent being is some way related to Being in general, and is a part of the universal system of existence

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 32

Related Scripture

• Romans 13:1-4
• Jeremiah 29:7
• Micah 6:8
• 1 Timothy 2:1-2

For reflection and discussion

1. How can Christians and non-Christians pursue the same civic goals while disagreeing about why those goals matter?
2. What does it mean to say every being is 'related to Being in general,' and why might that ground a public ethic?
3. What responsibilities, according to Edwards, do civil magistrates have toward the whole community, believer and unbeliever alike?