BOOK REVIEW:
The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards. By William J. Danaher Jr. Columbia Series in Reformed Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. xi + 324 pp. (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0664227371. 

In this erudite monograph, William Danaher argues that if Edwards’s ethical writings are read through the lens of his trinitarian theology, they make distinctive contributions to contemporary ethical reflection. This does not mean Danaher thinks Edwards’s ethics are obviously trinitarian. On the contrary, he maintains that Edwards put the Trinity into the background when he engaged interlocutors who did not share his theological presuppositions. However, Edwards believed that “duties are founded on doctrines,” and Danaher ably shows that his “Trinitarian reflection is essential for understanding his theological ethics” (p. 251).

Danaher makes his case through a two-part argument. First, he gathers Edwards’s writings on the Trinity into a presentation of his doctrine of God. Then he reads Edwards’s ethics from this trinitarian perspective. Chapter 1 explores Edwards’s use of the psychological analogy, highlighting the idea that Edwards’s philosophical idealism enabled him to move beyond some of the difficulties plaguing conceptions relying on substance metaphysics. Most notably, idealism permits a thoroughly personal conception of the Trinity. Edwards’s psychological analogy also emphasizes the harmony of loving relations that characterizes God’s life, which he links with his description of the human moral life as theosis. Love, according to Edwards, is the “very essence of Christianity,” because God is the Trinity, and the goal of human life is participation in this life (p. 40).

Chapter 2 focuses on the social analogy in which Edwards emphasizes the “other-regarding aspect of God’s triune love” (p. 72). This analogy enables Edwards to relate his trinitarian theology not simply to the individual moral life, but to the communal life of the church, the social nature of personhood, and the value of a world whose existence is attributable to the diffusive nature of God.

Following this lucid presentation of Edwards’s trinitarian theology, Danaher shows that Edwards’s works on Christian “duties” are informed by his doctrinal convictions. Chapter 3 interprets the Religious Affections as a theological anthropology shaped by the psychological and social analogies. For Edwards, affectivity is intimately connected with knowing and being, and the moral life (the “moral image of God”) is determined by the dispositional, noetic and ontic experience of trinitarian love (p. 123-124). Danaher also argues that the Religious Affections ought to be read as a constructive work in ethics, rather than simply as an exercise in religious psychology or a repudiation of enthusiasm. Finally, Danaher avers that Edwards’s trinitarian account of virtue offers a compelling alternative to recent retrievals of Aristotelian virtue ethics.

In chapter 4 Danaher maintains that Edward’s trinitarian conception of freedom provides resources for moving beyond the well-worn debate between compatibilism and libertarianism. While Edwards’s view has clear similarities with the compatibilist account of freedom, his theological framework distinguishes him from other compatibilists (e.g., Hobbes and Hume), and seems superior to the theological presuppositions undergirding the libertarianism of such thinkers as Samuel Clarke and Richard Swinburne. Swinburne, for example, defines the will in terms of solitary decisions, and thereby undermines the importance of relationality for the moral life. Moreover, his idea that one is only morally responsible for decisions made independently of any cause jeopardizes the connection between communion with God and moral goodness. And finally, his emphasis on the need for human progress toward salvation by their own effort diminishes the role of God’s triune love in redeeming the world from sin.

Danaher also demonstrates that Edwards’s trinitarian theology provides the basis for a doctrine of sin that avoids some of the problematic aspects of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “realistic” assessment of individual and communal life. He then brings Edwards into conversation with recent works on theodicy. He shows, for instance, how Edwards’s vision better accounts for the experience of abject suffering than John Hick’s view, which can only accommodate evils that serve some pedagogical purpose.

In the final chapter, Danaher contends that the Two Dissertations are apologetic works in the vein of Freedom of the Will and Original Sin, rather than the heart of Edwards’s theological ethics (p. 219). Moreover, he maintains that when these works are read through the lens of Edwards’s trinitarian theology, they may be brought into fruitful discussion with contemporary love ethics. Perhaps one of the more interesting, if briefly stated theses in this regard, is that when Edwards’s conception of duty is interpreted in light of his doctrines, there is little value in comparing Edwards’s work with James Gustafson’s non-trinitarian or “freestanding” theocentric ethics (p. 220). In the final sections, he then also distinguishes Edwards’s views on the relationship between ethics and ecclesiology in Charity and Its Fruits from those of Stanley Hauerwas, and succinctly describes some of the similarities and differences between Edwards and John Zizioulas on this matter. Danaher ably shows here that Edwards’s concern is to “depict the relations of love that are normative in a church that bears God’s triune image” (p. 248).

Throughout this work, Danaher compellingly argues both for the exegetical validity and beneficial effects of reading of Edwards’s ethics through his trinitarian theology. His interpretation and critique of Edwards’s psychological and social analogies genuinely advances the dialogue concerning Edwards’s trinitarian convictions and their relevance for current theological and ethical reflection. One of the strengths of this work is that Danaher not only argues for the relevance of these convictions, but demonstrates it by bringing them into dialogue with a number of contemporary thinkers. 

James R. Wilson
Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, VA 

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SPRING/SUMMER 2007, VOL. 7, #1.