God’s end in creation is Himself, to glorify Himself. Does that make God selfish? No, Edwards says, and for two reasons (cf. Holmes, God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards 
First is an overtly Trinitarian answer. Virtue is to love God, also for God. Therefore, God’s virtue “must consist primarily in love to himself .” But Edwards adds at once that self-love is “the mutual love and friendship which subsists eternally and necessarily between the several persons of the Godhead.”
Second is an implicitly Trinitarian argument, which has a neat twist. God displays His glory in creation and history. That glory is known and loved by rational creatures, who know and love God by participating in God’s own knowledge and love (which, Edwards says elsewhere, are the Son and Spirit). So the self-glorifying display of God’s glory is at once the incorporation of human beings into the glory of Triune life. Self-glory and glorification of creatures are identical. As Edwards puts it, “God’s respect to the creature’s good, and his respect to himself . . . are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself.” This union with God becomes “more and more strict and perfect,” so that it becomes “nearer and more like to that between God the Father and the Son; who are so united that their interest is perfectly one . . . the creature must be looked upon as united to God in an infinite strictness.”
The basis for Edwards’s denial that God is selfish is, in short, deification.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
