Interpretations V: Edwards and Contemporary Theology

Scripture focus

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

Hebrews 13:8 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

As Edwards's works have become more widely available, contemporary theologians increasingly draw on them for constructive purposes rather than merely historical interest, following the earlier example of H. Richard Niebuhr, whose theological vision was deeply indebted to Edwards. McClymond and McDermott survey several live areas of appropriation: ethics, aesthetics, spiritual theology, the theology of religions, and public theology. Ethicists like Paul Ramsey and William Spohn are struck by how much moral competence Edwards grants unregenerate humanity, seeing 'natural virtue' as a genuine, if incomplete, image of true moral beauty.

Spohn treats Edwards's ethics as a full-fledged 'metaethics,' rooting moral obligation in beauty and personal response to God rather than in rules or calculated outcomes. True Virtue defines the virtuous act as consent to the "great whole" of being, unlike a merely apparent virtue that consents only to some limited portion of reality. Because this vision is Trinitarian — human love participating in the eternal love between Father and Son — Spohn argues it reorients moral perception rather than adding new obligations, offering a richer foundation than either Lutheran suspicion of law or Anabaptist rejection of natural morality.

Paul Lewis likewise values Edwards for anticipating today's recovery of virtue ethics, praising his refusal to split the human self into warring faculties of reason and passion. Where Lewis criticizes theologians who privilege narrative at the expense of emotion, he finds in Edwards's doctrine of the affections a genuinely unified account of moral agency — one where reason itself springs from rightly ordered love rather than standing over against it.

Key points

• Contemporary theologians increasingly mine Edwards constructively, following H. Richard Niebuhr's earlier example, in ethics, aesthetics, spiritual theology, the theology of religions, and public theology.
• Paul Ramsey and William Spohn note that Edwards grants substantial moral competence to unregenerate humanity, treating natural virtue as a genuine (though incomplete) image of true moral beauty.
• Spohn calls Edwards's ethics a "metaethics" rooted in beauty and personal response to God, exemplified by True Virtue's distinction between consent to the "great whole" of being and merely apparent, partial virtue.
• Because Edwards's ethic is Trinitarian at its root, Spohn argues it reorients moral perception rather than imposing new obligations — a genuine alternative to both legalistic and antinomian tendencies.
• Paul Lewis praises Edwards's unified view of the human self, in which reason springs from rightly ordered affection rather than standing opposed to it, as a needed corrective in contemporary virtue ethics.

A line worth remembering

The virtuous act consents to the "great whole" of being, while merely apparent virtue consents to a limited portion of reality.

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 44

Related Scripture

• Psalm 27:4
• Micah 6:8
• Romans 12:2
• Philippians 4:8

For reflection and discussion

1. Edwards saw natural morality in the unconverted as a real, if incomplete, image of true virtue — how does that shape the way you view the ethical seriousness of people outside the church?
2. What would change in your own moral life if you treated obedience less as a rule to satisfy and more as beauty you were being drawn toward?
3. Where do you notice reason and emotion being set against each other in how you were taught to think about right and wrong — and how might Edwards's unified view of the affections correct that?