The view from the summit

Are you concerned with your own happiness? Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensees that happiness 'is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.' Suppose that the key to your ultimate happiness, the meaning of it all, were contained in the following mind-blowing paragraphs from Jonathan Edwards? I offer them the way a mountain climber might offer a snapshot of the view from the summit of Everest. Reading Edwards is a bit like mountain climbing...it's arduous work, but the view from the top takes your breath away! And looking at a snapshot is poor substitute for taking the journey yourself. These come from the final pages of The End for Which God Created the World (1765).

If God has respect to something in the creature, which he views as of everlasting duration, and as rising higher and higher through that infinite duration, and that not with constantly diminishing (but perhaps an increasing) celerity; then he has respect to it, as, in the whole, of infinite height; though there never will be any particular time when it can be said already to have come to such a height.

Let the most perfect union with God be represented by something at an infinite height above us; and the eternally increasing union of the saints with God, by something that is ascending constantly towards that infinite height, moving upwards with a given velocity; and that is to continue thus to move to all eternity. God, who views the whole of this eternally increasing height, views it as an infinite height. And if he has respect to it, and makes it his end, as in the whole of it, he has respect to it as an infinite height, though the time will never come when it can be said it has already arrived at this inifinite height.

God aims at that which the motion or progression which he causes, aims at, or tends to. If there be many things supposed to be so made and appointed, that, by a constant eternal motion, they all tend to a certain center; then it appears that he who made them, and is the cause of their motion, aimed at that center; and that term of their motion, to which they eternally tend, and are eternally, as it were, striving after. And if God be this center, then God aimed at himself. And herein it appears, that as he is the first author of their being and motion, so he is the last end, the final term, to which is their ultimate tendency and aim.*

The final paragraph of Edwards's discourse makes me think of 1 Corinthians 2:9. And lest we think Edwards's talk of 'satisfying justice' with 'eternal damnation' sounds unduly harsh, keep in mind Paul's succinct diagnosis of the human condition in Romans 3:23. If the glory of God is of infinite worth and the highest good in the universe, then not honoring it as such, deserves the highest punishment.

It is no solid objection against God aiming at an infinitely perfect union of the creature with himself, that the particular time will never come when it can be said, the union is now infinitely perfect. God aims at satisfying justice in the eternal damnation of sinners; which will be satisfied by their damnation, considered no otherwise than with regard to its eternal duration. But yet there never will come that particular moment, when it can be said, that now justice is satisfied. But if this does not satisfy our modern freethinkers who do not like the talk about satisfying justice with an infinite punishment; I suppose it will not be denied by any, that God, in glorifying the saints in heaven with eternal felicity, aims to satisfy his infinite grace or benevolence, by the bestowment of a good infinitely valuable, because eternal: and yet there never will come the moment, when it can be said, that now this infinitely valuable good has been actually bestowed.*

Perhaps this sounds far-fetched? I offer two quotes for your reflection.

'If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world.' (C.S. Lewis)

'Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.' (Qoheleth "the Preacher")



*Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World as it appears in John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory, Crossway (1998)