Virtue Reformed: Rereading Jonathan Edwards's Ethics

Description

Much of the previous fifty years of scholarship on Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) has circumscribed his ethical thought either within narrow interpretations of Calvinist theology or the philosophy of the "moral sense." The mutually exclusive nature of each perspective has distorted the importance Edwards granted human abilities in the salvation process and the demanding moral standards he thought were uniquely defining of Christians. Building on new interest in Protestant scholasticism, Puritan "precisionism," and virtue ethics, "Virtue Reformed" recalibrates the scholarly stalemate with a comprehensive rereading of both major published treatises and lesser-known discourses. The result is a fresh portrait of a fascinating eighteenth-century figure's struggle to be both a forwarder of the Reformation and a participant in the Enlightenment. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABBREVIATIONS PREFACE Virtue and Salvation: Centrifugal Forces Edwards as Theologian and Philosopher: Centrifugal Historiographies INTRODUCTION. REREADING EDWARDS’S ETHICS The Current State of Scholarship The Need for a New Reading Protestant Scholasticism as a Historical Frame Pushing the Theological Boundaries of Perfectionism Aristotelian and Neoplatonic Philosophies of Virtue A Summary of the Argument CHAPTER ONE. THE UBIQUITY OF THE PRACTICAL SYLLOGISM Christian Practice as the ‘Sign of Signs’ The Ubiquity of Puritanism The Practical Syllogism Used Against the Revivalists The Practical Syllogism Used Against Moral Sense Philosophy Sharpening the Syllogism: The Distinctive Motivational Structure of Sanctified Charity Conclusions: Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Perfectionistic CHAPTRER TWO. THE HOLY SPIRIT’S TENANCY EXPANDED Virtue as the ‘Sign of Signs’ and Imputed Righteousness Tensions in Calvin, Puritan Responses, and Edwards’s Revival Writings Cambridge Platonists on Virtue and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit Using Cambridge Platonism Against Deism and Moral Sense Theory Adapting Emanation Metaphysics for Reformed Polemics Edwards’s Privileging of Inherent Righteousness Over Imputed Righteousness A Reformed Moral Sense Theory? CHAPTER THREE. THE INTEGRITY OF SECONDARY CAUSES A Pre-Modern Taxonomy of Causality Secondary Causes in Turretin and Gale Secondary Causes in Puritanism: Two Traditions Antinomianism and Edwards’s Early Published Sermons The Development of Anti-Antinomianism in Edwards’s Early Revival Writings Secondary Causes in the Treatise Concerning Religious Affections Diverse Traditions and Intersecting Discourses: Edwards’s Mature View CHAPTER FOUR. HABITUATION AND THE WILL’S LIMITED FREEDOM Edwards’s Conception of the Will and Reformed Historiography A Kind of Compatibilism The Arminian Position Defined Edwardsean Freedom as Limited Dispositional Enhancement in the Future Habit and Freedom in Edwards and Aristotle Edwards and Mastricht on Freedom and Secondary Causes CHAPTER FIVE. COMPLICATING PERSEVERANCE The Perseverance of the Saints as a Theological Crossroads Divesting Salvation from Assurance—I Divesting Salvation from Assurance—II God’s Maintenance of Assurance and Salvation—I God’s Maintenance of Assurance and Salvation—II Complicating the Established Canon as Context Justification, Sanctification and Perseverance in the ‘Miscellanies’ Perseverance as a Convergence Point in the Edwardsean Corpus CHAPTER SIX. CHURCH COMMUNITY ASPROVIDENTIAL AND PRUDENTIAL Sharpening the Distinguishing Features of Those ‘In Favor With God’ Discernment and Prudence as Edwardsean Cardinal Virtues Edwards’s Perfectionist Ecclesiology: Puzzles and Prospects The Church as Polis: Discernment and Prudence as Inescapably Social The Logic of Virtue: Conversion, Assurance, Second Causes, Perseverance CONCLUSION The Contemporary Connotations of Virtue The Multiple Valences of Edwardsean Virtue The Problem of Canon and the Problem of Edwards’s Intellectual Development Edwards’s Intellectual Development Through the Lens of the ‘Miscellanies’ Reading Edwards Against Himself Edwards’s Continuing Significance WORKS CITED PRIMARY SOURCES SECONDARY SOURCES INDEX OF NAMES SUBJECT INDEX INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES