3. Edwards Betrayed?

[Rob Boss]

For decades scholars claimed Hopkins “betrayed” or diluted Edwards’s theology. Why do you push back against that view?

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[Joseph Lee]

Scholars have portrayed Edwards’s ethics as philosophical, aesthetic, and/or theological in nature, thereby lacking a clear social vision in his virtue theory. Likewise, Hopkins has been portrayed as having a legal and activist ethics, which is seen as diverging from Edwards’s moral thought. A key thesis that has been widely adopted, albeit in different variations, is Hopkins’s changing of Edwards’s doctrine of benevolence to Being in general to his doctrine of disinterested benevolence, moving from the impractical to the practical. Or you could say Edwards’s theocentric virtue theory changed into an activist ethics, which places more attention on the creature.

Importantly, it is now widely accepted that Edwards’s philosophical theology (located primarily in the Two Dissertations and more specifically, True Virtue) and moral theology should be kept together. Edwards’s moral or ethical theology is found in his sermons and various Miscellany entries. Yet scholars continue to isolate both End of Creation and True Virtue (Two Dissertations) from his ethical theology highlighted elsewhere to explain Edwards’s virtue theory. Also, scholars continue to argue that Hopkins drew from Edwards’s True Virtue for his doctrine of disinterested benevolence. Given that Hopkins received all of Edwards’s manuscripts, he must have had a broader view of Edwards’s understanding of benevolence beyond what is shown in True Virtue. It always seemed like a stretch to me that Hopkins would only draw from that one work for his understanding of benevolence. Instead, I argue that Hopkins drew from other sources beyond the Two Dissertations (to account for a holistic view of Edwards’s doctrine of benevolence) for his doctrine of disinterested benevolence.