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TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 32 cont 2
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Contemporary Criticisms of The Nature of True Virtue
1. Faust and Johnson on Virtue
I conclude this chapter by considering the views of some modern ethicists on Edwards’ conception of virtue. Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson, in their introduction to representative selections of Edwards’ writing, discuss the meaning and significance of his treatise on virtue. *109* They note that according to Edwards virtue consists in right affections rather than right judgment - that is, the prevalence of good affections over evil affections rather than the prevalence of the mind over the passions. This is quite true. But at the same time, they misinterpret the significance of this truth. They see a contrast between Edwards and Wollaston (and even Watts) who “saw reason as the foundation of virtue and as its proper measure.” *110* Faust and Johnson do not seem to notice that there is a difference between founding virtue upon reason, and ascertaining what virtue is by reason. They do not see that Edwards always extols the primacy of reason as the principle of knowledge and judgment. In his Religious Affections, for example, he argues that while affections are the heart of religion, they nevertheless must begin in the mind. *111* Faust and Johnson are therefore not justified in saying of the intellectualist position, “such a position was wholly uncongenial to Edwards.” *112*
They continue their exposition by discussing the problem confronting the sentimentalists who located virtue in the feelings. The problem for this point of view is that virtue is not only benevolence, but also beneficial, and that while it consisted of disinterested benevolence, persons were often exhorted for their own interest to be benevolent. Faust and Johnson note that many moralists of the time (e.g. Cumberland and Gay), frankly appealed to such considerations on behalf of virtue. On the other hand, Francis Hutcheson was aware of this problem, and, in the view of Faust and Johnson, Hutcheson influenced Edwards profoundly. *113* Hutcheson maintained that men have a moral sense which perceives the excellence of a virtuous action, even when the act offers no advantage to them. Therein he avoided urging men to be unselfish for selfish reasons. “Virtue is to be pursued not because it is useful, but because it is beautiful, not as a means but as an end.” *114* Our author’s conclude:
It is against this background of discussion that Edwards’s opening statement in The Nature of True Virtue must be seen: “Whatever controversies and variety of opinions there are about the nature of virtue, yet all (excepting some skeptics, who deny any real difference between virtue and vice) mean by it, something beautiful, or rather some kind of beauty, or excellency. Like Schaftesbury and Hutcheson, he was anxious to raise virtue above the level of self-love, to place it beyond the point where it depended upon self-love. It was to be something lovely, not merely something useful. *115*
A little later they summarize their view: “Edwards, then, accepted the theory which Schaftesbury and Hutcheson had persuasively presented, namely, that the amiableness of virtue lay in its beauty rather than in benefits.” *116* Faust and Johnson mitigate their conclusion slightly in the note where they recognize that Edwards was not a disciple of Hutcheson and his group, and that he was also influenced by the Cambridge Platonists. *117*
Nevertheless Hutcheson, according to some critics, was not free of the problem of self-love. Since, according to his theory, people were attracted to virtue because of its pleasingness to themselves, it represented a subtle kind of selfishness. Hutcheson replied that the important question about a moral agent is what pleases him. Is it his own private good? In that case, he would be ruled by self-love. If it is for the public good, he may be regarded as benevolent. According to Faust and Johnson, Edwards took up this point in his Nature of True Virtue. Like Hutcheson, Edwards said that “the disposition to be pleased by his neighbor’s happiness was prior to the pleasure derived from gratifying it. To call such affection selfish is to confuse the effect with the cause.” *118*
Faust and Johnson recognize that Edwards took exception to the man-centered character of Hutcheson’s views. Without denying that God should be the object of our ethical striving, Hutcheson and others had definitely moved in the direction of centering moral concern in the human race, a direction that lead to the utilitarianism of J. S. Mill. Edwards, they note, did recognize the beauty of order in society, but it was a beauty of a Beauty:kind. Our authors astutely observe that in Edwards’ connection “of the obligations of men to exercise good will toward humanity . . . to their obligations to love God, he had exalted the virtue of interest in the common good far above its position at the head of any secular ethics.” *119*
The editors then make an especially acute observation about Edwards’ view of human depravity. “The full enormity of that depravity in Edwards’s view can be realized only by comparing man as he is, a slave to self-love, with man as he ought to be, disinterestedly benevolent.” *120* Most of The Nature of True Virtue is taken up on this very theme, as Faust and Johnson describe: “After two opening chapters presenting his lofty standard of virtue, Edwards proceeds to the proof of the fact that everything in natural man having the appearance of virtue is really infinitely below it.” *121*
Objecting to types of this “low view” many moralists of the benevolence school affirmed with Hutcheson that men had a natural impulse toward benevolence. Edwards, in his own way, agreed, but against Hutcheson, Edwards accounts for these “natural impulses” to pity and gratitude, etc. while showing that there is nothing of true virtue in them. First, he explains the place of natural instinct. Second, Edwards shows the force of the association of ideas (as for example, a child may have such a fixed fear of rattlesnakes that even the picture of a snake is sufficient to arouse disgust). *122* “In this way, Edwards went on to say, ‘some vices may become in a degree odious’ and some virtues may awaken admiration ‘by the influence of self-love, through an habitual connection of ideas of contempt’ or of approval with them.” *123*
Faust and Johnson note a third refutation of Hutcheson is found in Edwards’ appeal to secondary beauty. He would well have agreed with Shedd, who wrote a sermon in the next century entitled “The Approbation of the Good, Not Necessarily the Love of It.” *124* This secondary beauty in social and moral things (consisting in their symmetry and so on) may elicit admiration, but this is not to be confused with virtue. Conscience, likewise, is based on self-love. Faust and Johnson sum the matter up in these words: “A virtuous man may have these dispositions, but they are no evidence in themselves that a man is virtuous.” *125*
This is well put, but Edwards actually taught more than the fact that the truly virtuous man may have these dispositions. It is true that the simple fact that a truly virtuous person may have these feelings would not, in and of itself, prove that the feelings are virtuous if encountered in another type of person. And yet according to Edwards, natural conscience and the approbation of the good, are absolutely essential to a truly virtuous person. For Jonathan Edwards, a non-virtuous person may have these attributes, but a virtuous person must have them. In other words, their presence does not prove a virtuous person, but their absence proves a non-virtuous person.
Faust and Johnson correctly recognize that Edwards’ procedure here is an acute refutation of Hutcheson. But if the observation just made is true, the critique of Hutcheson is even more profound than the editors recognized. In other words, Edwards not only shows Hutcheson that these qualities do not necessarily indicate true virtue, he does so while showing at the same time that they are indispensable to true virtue. It is one thing to show that a person can have these qualities without being virtuous; it is another and deeper thing to show that a person may have these qualities without being truly virtuous, which qualities are nevertheless absolutely essential to true virtue. Edwards puts an higher premium on secondary beauty and natural conscience than does Hutcheson, without falling into the trap of assuming that these qualities in and of themselves represent true virtue. Edwards not only breaks the cords with which Hutcheson had tried to bind him, but binds himself with additional cords that Hutcheson had not used, before he liberates himself. Just as Edwards had invented some reasons in support of the self-determination he opposed, that the Arminian supporters themselves had never discovered (to demonstrate their utter futility), so he adds this further consideration about natural conscience and secondary beauty that Hutcheson himself did not urge, which would be futile if he ever did think of so doing.
I cannot help but notice in passing that Edwards’ thinking is purely biblical here, though the Bible is never cited. It has often been said that in The Nature of True Virtue, unlike all his other writings, Edwards never appeals to Scripture. This was undoubtedly to show that his thinking could be demonstrated speculatively apart from revelation. Most commentators note this point. But I haven’t found any who have noted as well the profound biblicality of Edwards’ thinking, even when the Bible is not cited. Some may be tempted to suppose that Edwards is now appearing in some virtuoso role, suddenly taking a glory to himself that he had usually attributed to divine revelation. But Peter Gay is quite right in saying that Edwards was in a biblical cage.” He never got out of that cage. He never attempted to get out of that cage. He never wanted to get out of that cage. *126* He even philosophized from that cage. He’s in this cage in The Nature of True Virtue, as in all of his other treatises. He doesn’t, however, here call attention to the cage, and probably for the reason already given; namely, to show that these truths can be demonstrated independently of Scripture, even though they never came to Edwards (nor in his opinion to anyone else) independently of Scripture. Edwards regularly insisted against the deists that the most fundamental ideas about God and morality would never have and never did come to be discovered apart from the light of Scriptural revelation. He always gladly admitted, along with John Locke, that “[a] sufficiency to see the reasonableness of these things, when pointed out, is not the same thing as a sufficiency to find them them out.” *127* Edwards labors this point constantly against Matthew Tindal and other thinkers, especially when he’s discussing matters immediately metaphysical. But he also observes in M 1340 that men have no idea of virtue, or happiness either, apart from special Revelation *128* So we may confidently assume that when Edwards says nothing about Scripture in The Nature of True Virtue that he is not going back on the fundamental principle of his life - that he never would have been able to write The Nature of True Virtue had he not first been taught by Holy Scripture. Once being instructed by Scripture, that which Scripture did teach, in Edwards’ view, could be clearly demonstrated independently of Scripture to the fallen but rational mind which continued to function even in the most depraved of sinners.
Faust and Johnson conclude their discussion with Edwards’ answer to a common objection against the Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity in relation to virtue. Its opposers charge that it is an insult to human nature, as well as a deterrent to any endeavor after holiness. As John Taylor had argued, when men believe they are worse than brutes, it’s small wonder that they behave worse than brutes. Faust and Johnson correctly, though inadequately, see Edwards’ reply.
Again and again he declared that although men are wholly corrupt and wholly unable of themselves to become virtuous, some of them are by the atonement of Christ and the consequent operation of supernatural and irresistible grace lifted out of their depravity. *129*
Edwards most certainly did teach the doctrines of grace and atonement as the solution, and indeed the only solution, to the problem of total depravity. But it should be said at this point that he did more than that. He not only taught that men could not be delivered from their depravity except by supernatural grace, he also taught (and indeed this was a cutting edge of his Puritan evangelism) that totally depraved persons could do something that was likely to lead to the receiving of this necessary grace, something that was outwardly good, and yet utterly without true virtue nor meriting the grace hoped for. This, of course, is his doctrine of seeking which we have developed extensively in chapter XXVIII, but which is not only lacking in the Faust and Johnson survey of Edwardsian theology, but it seems to be lacking in their awareness as well. *130*
2. Clyde A. Holbrook
If anything is clear in Clyde Holbrook’s view of Jonathan Edwards it is that his theology and ethic are Calvinistic, or an “objectivistic” bringing of his Calvinism into harmony with Neoplatonism. *131* The core of Edwards’ ethics is the claim that God’s right to rule His creation is bound up with the indubitable fact that He does indeed rule. *132* Nevertheless, this interpreter cannot see the compatibility between objectivism and the subjective element in Calvinism, and sees it as compromise in Edwards that he
was not above the temptation to resort to some aspects of theological subjectivism when it suited his purposes. . . . The return to theological subjectivism and utilitarianism with its appeal to rewards and punishments and self-interest repeatedly occurs in the history of religions. *133*
It is strange indeed that a scholar can write an entire volume on The Ethics of Jonathan Edwards and not see that the theory of rewards and punishments, so far from being a yielding to “temptation” on Edwards’ part, is actually a continued yielding obedience to his sovereign God who promises rewards and threatens punishments. *134*
Again, Edwards is supposed to have “hedged” because he insisted “that the condition of the sinner should not be painted in worse colors than was the truth.” *135* We can only wish that Holbrook would “hedge” a little and not paint Edwards “in worse colors than was the truth.” Edwards always tried to give even the devil his due, calling him the “greatest blockhead” of all time.
Holbrook is a fine example of the misfortune of turning Edwards over to the non-Calvinists. It is not tragic because they are non-Calvinists but because they so rarely understand Calvinism. Agreeing with it is not a scholarly necessity, but understanding it is, at least if one is to write about it.
Holbrook asks, “How could Edwards affirm that the level of ordinary moral life opens the way to true virtue, given the persistent influence of self-love?” *136*
The question is, how can Clyde Holbrook not remember that, for Jonathan Edwards, self-love is not a vice, but a non-ethical instinct for survival that could well spur one motivated by it to seek the God who alone could give the new nature which alone could enable a person to find the happiness that self-love yearned for? Moreover, God is a God of mercy who may give grace to the chief of sinners.
Before leaving Holbrook’s view of Edwards on virtue, we cannot pass over his “Jonathan Edwards addresses some modern critics of Original Sin,” *137* because Original Sin is so close in thought, as well as time, to The Nature of True Virtue. Holbrook begins his essay noticing that H. D. Lewis admits that defective ethical judgments occurred, but so do correct ones. Therefore, he reasons, there is no evil will, or original sin, because that would eliminate all real differences in ethical perception and deeds. *138* Lewis, therefore, was amazed at the New Orthodoxy’s universal sin in defiance of our “plainest convictions.”
Neo-orthodoxy, never overly troubled by rational objections (ethical or otherwise) would not be bothered by such critiques - their own “revelationism” above all such mundane fault-finding with things over this world’s head. However, Jonathan Edwards, always the “rational biblical” theologian, was concerned enough to obliterate such irrational criticisms. H. D. Lewis’ fault, Edwards said a couple centuries before Lewis was born, was that he did not realize that a person’s being able to make correct moral judgments was in no way inconsistent with his hating with his heart what he approved with his mind. Lewis not only didn’t answer Jonathan Edwards, he never seems to have grasped Edwards’ thought, being misled by the non-rational original sin of the neo-orthodox.
In the course of his article Holbrook makes a notable observation:
[Edwards] made an important place for a natural morality that followed Francis Hutcheson’s moral sense theory and at the same time distinguished that level of morality from true virtue, the achievement of which depended solely upon divine grace. However, in his descriptions of original sin we find him employing immorality as well as failure to love or cordially consent to Being, that is, God, as marks of sin’s omnipresence. Thus the problem of the relation between the two levels of moral activity ran throughout his work. In deploying his arguments in defense of original sin, he could call upon both ethical and religious evidences of human failure, thus beclouding the line between the two, as Norman Fiering has pointed out. *139*
After this, Holbrook reviews the whole matter in relation to Edwards’ Great Christian Doctrine. First, he notes that Jonathan Edwards’ empirical case for universal sin as an argument for original sin. Even in Edwards’ day George Turnbull and John Taylor had argued for “prevailing innocency” of “the greater part of mankind.” Holbrook states well Jonathan Edwards’ answer: all men’s “good” acts are bad good acts because their evil motivation vitiates what seems good. This explains why their moral “ship” may stay above water longer than it takes it to sink, because motivation takes longer to reveal itself than the epiphenomenal “virtues” do.
Yet if total depravity explains universal sin, does it not self-destruct in the process Edwards is asked. It would seem so according to Holbrook, and that notwithstanding this excellent summary of Edwards’ real thinking provided by Holbrook (wherein he demonstrates that he knows what he does not understand):
Edwards esteemed “a rational brain.” *140* “All things in the soul of man,” he claimed, “shall be under the government of reason, which is the highest faculty of our being.” And Christian charity, he maintained, is not “founded on the ruins of reason.” *141* Without the capacity for rational argument “all our proof of the being of God ceases.” *142* Nor, as he answered Taylor, did the doctrine of original sin cast contempt “upon the noble faculties and capacities of man’s nature.” *143* After all, did not his arguments in the Freedom of the Will and the Original Sin clearly show that reason could be trusted to reach rationally convincing conclusions?
The matter did not end there for Edwards, for he also claimed that reason was insufficient without revelation. As to matters of religious faith, he inquired, “If human reason is really sufficient and there be no need of anything else, why has it never proved so?” *144* So far, the question need not imply that reason is affected by corruption or sin, but only that it is insufficient for the achievement of a truly virtuous life. And this theme he addressed in True Virtue, where he attributed failure to perceive and love Being as such to narrowness of cognition. *145* The understanding, which was for him a more capacious faculty than reason alone, might discover sin and even lead toward the love of God, but it was incapable of taking the crucial step to true virtue. Or as he put it in Original Sin, “Tho it is not easy precisely to fix the limits of man’s capacity as to love to God; yet in general we may determine that his capacity of love is coextended with his capacity of knowledge. The exercise of the understanding opens the way for the exercise of the other faculty.” *146* Thus a logical connection was established between the understanding, inclusive of reason, and love to God, but a true knowledge exceeds this natural understanding, for the former depends upon a divinely given “new sense” or “relish” which the natural understanding does not possess. However, he did not make clear how an understanding which by definition lacked that supernatural sense could perceive or direct one to that love of Being of which by definition it was completely ignorant. *147*
The problem of reason’s competence in the face of total depravity takes a different form in Edwards’s Notes on the Mind. There he pointed out that “a person may have a strong reason and yet not a good reason. He may have a strength of mind to drive an argument, and yet not hold even balances. It is not so much from a defect of the reasoning process, as from a fault of the disposition.” When a person does go astray, it is due to “prejudice through natural temper or education or circumstances; or for want of a great love to truth and of fear of error.” *148* Here he continued to uphold reason’s competence, but in admitting that want of love to truth affected the reasoning process, a way had been opened for the corruption of reason by total depravity. His anthropology had so intertwined the reason with the broader conception of the understanding that the “set” of the personality affected both understanding and reason. The motives and affections were so knit with the understanding that reason could not escape the sinful character of the entire self. Thus in a crucial passage he concluded “if by the dictate of the understanding is meant what reason declares to be best or most for the person’s happiness taken in the whole of his duration, it is not true, that the will always follows the last dictate of the understanding.” *149* The volitional aspect of the self, which for Edwards included the affections, may well govern the direction the reason will take. It is not unknown that the power and clarity of reason may go hand in hand with premises whose falsity the reason, not being a disinterested faculty of the self, cannot detect. Thus reason, competent as it may be, may be drawn into complicity with a corrupt nature. Edwards, in spite of his high opinion of reason, might well be found in agreement with Francis Hutcheson’s conclusion that “reason is only a subservient power to our ultimate determinations, either of perception or will. The ultimate end is settled by some sense, and some determination of will; since by some sense we enjoy happiness, and self-love determines to it without reasoning.” *150* The application of Hutcheson’s comment to Edwards’ view of man’s sinful plight is obvious. *151*
Holbrook goes off the track almost immediately after this lucid summary of Edwards’ lucid position:
If he [Edwards] retracted his emphasis on a total and radical depravity that encompassed the understanding; he left the doctrine subject to the charge of being irrational and self-contradictory and, therefore, false. But if he maintained total depravity affected the understanding his rational argumentation was pointless.” *152*
Even Holbrook, the “friend” whose efforts eliminate Edwards’ need for enemies, can’t see that there is no dilemma here. As I have shown above and before, depravity is of the heart in Edwards, so it does not destroy natural faculties, though it destroys all virtue in their use. The mind is not “encompassed” by the disposition so as to smother or destroy it. It still sees clearly the virtues which the heart of the fallen man hates.
Nor is the other alternative - that if Edwards held to depravity’s affecting the “understanding” - “pointless.” The “noetic influence of sin” is not on the mind but on the heart. The motivation is like a criminal’s use of a lawyer. It dictates that he is to use an excellent mind to knock down all arguments against the criminal and seek all arguments for him. The mind will use its formidable reasoning while the heart will determine its use.
Further problems arise in Holbrook’s understanding of Edwards and the conscience. He argues that
As in the case of reason, Edwards defended the moral sense and conscience, but its status face to face with both total depravity and true virtue remained ambiguous. Whereas Lewis, after admitting that the conscience needs to be cultivated lest it fail of its purpose, held that such failure is due to “neglect in the past” or a “willful lapse” and denied that defective ethical judgment was a sign of an evil will, Edwards placed the blame not simply upon ignorance but upon the distortion of will by self-love. It was the conscience as well as the will and the affections which stood in need of redemption. *153*
No, the conscience did not stand “in need of redemption” because it never fell. In Edwards’ thought it is the man and his moral nature that fall, not the natural moral faculties (any more than the natural rational faculties).
3. William K. Frankena
In the Foreword to a modern reprint of Edwards’ True Virtue *154* Frankena writes, as noted above, that it
is now increasingly realized, he was perhaps the outstanding American theologian and certainly the ablest American philosopher to write before the great period of Pierce, James, Royce, Dewey, and Santayana. In no field is his power more manifest than in moral philosophy. Even here, however, he has been known mainly for his book on the Freedom of the Will, which has usually been shrugged off as a defense of the outdated doctrine of predestination, but is recently being recognized again as a remarkable piece of philosophy. *155*
Frankena goes on to say about Edwards’ Nature of True Virtue, “It is a philosophical work of great originality and penetration. . . .” *156*
Introducing his remarks Frankena offers a remarkably frank acknowledgment of his philosophical prejudices. “Our essay has theological passages and overtones which may put readers off.” Nevertheless, in proceeds to offer a careful examination of Edwards’ theory of virtue.
Frankena sees Edwards as a sentimentalist. He identifies the moral sense as a sense of beauty, but there are two kinds of beauty and two distinct senses by which they are relished. The one consists in love to Being-in-general; the other in harmony proportion and uniformity in variety. The former is primary, highest, true, spiritual, divine, and is relished by a spiritual sense. The other secondary, inferior, natural, and perceived by a natural sense. The two moralities are not discrepant. He quotes Edwards’ statement that “natural conscience, if the understanding be properly enlightened. . . . concurs with the law of God, and is of equal extent with it, and joins its voice with it in every article.” *157* Only the perspectives are different; the natural conscience doesn’t speak out of a relish of the true beauty.
In the inferior morality of natural man, the main element is the sense of justice as deontological intuitionists have always stressed. Certain actions are fitting or unfitting in certain situations or relations. The sense of justice is combined with a natural love of consistency, which Frankena calls a virtual third source of moral judgment, leading us to the Golden Rule. This love of consistency arises from our inclination to feel an act as one with ourselves; therefore it arises from self-love, and as such is not true virtue.
Though generally helpful, Frankena concludes his brief introduction to Edwards with this seriously misleading interpretation:
He held to his high ideal of true virtue, and argued instead that there is a grace whereby some may be enabled to obtain it. It does not come to all, but no one can honestly say, ‘It will not come to me,’ for if he is genuinely concerned, then it has already come. *158*
There is simply nothing in The Nature of True Virtue or anything else that Jonathan Edwards ever wrote that teaches that if a natural man is “genuinely concerned, then it (grace) has already come.” Frankena is so accurate and penetrating in his statement of Edwards’ ethics that it is difficult to believe that he misunderstood Edwards here. Furthermore, the statement is literally accurate. But it is so cryptic that it will inevitably give an erroneous impression to the readers, most of whom have far less penetration into the mind of Jonathan Edwards than does William Frankena. This statement, as it stands, represents Edwards as teaching that anyone who is genuinely concerned has grace in his heart. The sense in which that statement could be accurate is that if “genuinely concerned” is interpreted as “sincerely with the love of God” concerned, then he has grace in his heart. But “genuinely concerned” is seldom interpreted so theologically. In this present context, the impression is given that any natural man who develops such a concern has done so out of grace. As we have shown, Edwards was a great preacher of the doctrine of seeking. Seekers were natural men who were awakened to their needs and began being genuinely concerned enough about their condition as to read the Bible, go to church, and practice all external morality. Yet this is not the product of saving grace. Edwards did not even promise that it would necessarily lead to saving grace, though it usually did.
4. Norman Fiering
Norman Fiering has provided a full-scale historical study of the ethics of Jonathan Edwards. *159* Seeking to understand Edwards in the context of the development of moral philosophy, Fiering examines both Edwards response to the leading ethical writers of his day, as well as the development of his own system of moral theology. After setting the intellectual stage, and considering some of the foundational principles of Edwards’ thought, chapter IV focuses on self-love, offering a thorough discussion of Thomas Shepard’s views and also some discussion of the secular context. Chapter V considers Edwards’ doctrine of hell and it is noteworthy that Fiering recognizes the doctrine of hell as essential to Edwards’ theology of fitness.
Chapter VI examines the relationship between morality and determinism in Edwards. A special question for Fiering is whether in Edwards’ thought reason or will predominated according to either the Thomist or the Augustinian tradition. According to Fiering, Perry Miller completely overlooked the latter - a critical oversight for Fiering argues that Edwards’ view was largely a form of voluntarism and not a development from Locke. Laboring the point that Edwards does not identify morality with intellectualism, as Reid had done in his criticism of David Hume, Fiering sees in this a kind of compliment to human nature per se. When he finds Edwards in The Nature of True Virtue saying that the wicked will acknowledge the justice of their condemnation, while continuing to hate virtue at the day of judgment, this, too, seems to Fiering to be some kind of compliment to fallen human nature - he seems to find some “true virtue” it it. He concludes: “After so many concessions to natural human virtue, Original Sin as a psychological concept was approaching the vanishing point.” *160* Thus Fiering asserts that Edwards’ Original Sin betrayed a “relative intellectual poverty.” *161* Such statements, however, betray a serious misunderstanding. It is incredible that anyone could confuse the approbation of good with the love of it. Fiering not only does so, but does so in a context in which Edwards himself is representing the damned, “perfect” haters of good, as those who nevertheless assent to the justice of their sentence at the day of judgment. Clearer Edwards could not have made it - a person’s approbation of the good is not necessarily the love of the same. When the damned at the day of judgment, while still utterly hating virtue, nevertheless acknowledge it (and their own guilty deviation from it), it must be clear that there is nothing at all of true virtue in such miserable creatures.
Conclusion
Having weighed the merits of the host of criticisms that have been brought against Edwards’ view of virtue, it would still seem that
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.” *162*
Or being interpreted: More love to Thee, O Christ, more love to Thee!
This chapter could have no better conclusion than for the reader to have the opportunity to taste first-hand a portion of that “speculation” of Edwards that inspired all the discussion and criticism we have been surveying for these many pages, to taste and see that it is good.
The Nature of True Virtue *163*
Chapter I. Showing Wherein The Essence of True Virtue Consists
Chapter III. Concerning the Secondary and Inferior Kind of Beauty
Chapter IV. Of Self-Love and its various Influence to Cause Love to Others, or the Contrary