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Overview
Jonathan Edwards explains, in his original dissertation: God’s inherent predisposition to spread out His truth, goodness, and beauty motivates everything He does. So, His decision to create our universe was motivated not by a desire or need for us, but by a desire to glorify Himself.
Ben Stevens’ remarkable new adaptation brings Edwards’ powerful arguments to life in fresh, contemporary language. In addition, thought-provoking questions for discussion or reflection invite readers to engage with the concepts and begin to apply them.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612917658 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Navigators |
| Publication date: | 06/20/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Why God Created the World
A Jonathan Edwards Adaptation
By Ben Stevens
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2014 Benjamin StevensAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61291-586-9
CHAPTER 1
Motives: A Few Helpful Distinctions
Without a motivation rooted in His nature—not because of some circumstance or consequence of creation—nothing would have moved Him to take on the task of creation.
Why did God create the world? In this book we will handle that question from two angles. In part 1, we will look at what logic can tell us, and in part 2 we will look at what Scripture has to say. I know that many people will be worried by the idea of trying to determine things about God using logic and might find such a philosophical approach suspicious. So let me explain my strategy.
Disagreements come up when discussing an important question like this one, and most often those disagreements revolve around a logical inference. We read a text which seems clear, but because we don't understand the logic of the text, we conclude, "No, this interpretation can't be right." Reason alone can't help us decide why God created the world, but because that's where disagreements tend to start, I would rather tackle it first. This will be easier than backtracking once we are knee-deep in Scripture, and such logical work helps us see Scripture's straightforward answer in a new light anyway.
We need to begin by thinking logically about God's possible motives for creating the world, and motives can be hard to quantify. This chapter, therefore, will give us some vocabulary for the discussion. I want to explain the three most important layers of a person's motives: (1) underlying intentions, (2) highest priorities, and (3) personal desires. I confess that this chapter will require more logical heavy lifting than most other chapters, but it's worth the work. By the end of this first chapter, we will have already learned things that change the way we think about why God created the world. Let's dive in.
Underlying Intentions
To understand people's underlying intentions, you have to consider their goals, their objectives. And in any goal, there are means and ends. I describe that difference by talking about preliminary goals vs. pure goals. A pure goal is an end, something you want for its own sake. Preliminary goals, on the other hand, are means, things you do just to get to a pure goal.
If you have ever been sick, you know all about this. Your pure goal will always be getting well, but in order to reach that pure goal, you inevitably set dozens of preliminary goals: make it to the doctor on time; get the right medicine; don't overexert yourself. Each of these becomes your goal, but they aren't things you want for their own sake. You do them to get something else, your pure goal: restored health.
There are a few advanced ways this distinction can play out. Sometimes a task takes such a long time that there are other preliminary goals in front of a single preliminary goal, and you may spend a long time checking boxes, completing other preliminary goals, before you ever get to a pure goal. For example, a man may sell some of his belongings to buy start-up equipment for a new company. He may hire staff and employ an ad agency to help him get the word out about the product. But in all that he does in selling belongings, launching a company, and sending thank-you notes to initial customers, getting enough money to take care of his family may be the unseen but always-present pure goal.
On the other hand, sometimes there are no preliminary goals. If you're standing by the pool on a hot day and suddenly sense an urge to go swimming, jumping in could fulfill a pure goal. So you don't have to assume a long chain of activities.
Finally, sometimes the same goal can be preliminary in one sense and pure in another. If you're trying to win someone's respect, you might do so partly for its own sake. After all, it's nice to be respected. But if you think knowing that person would help you accomplish some other goal, it may be a means to an end—a preliminary goal—as well. So, sometimes a single goal can be pure in one sense and preliminary in another.
This distinction applies to God as well. God has lots of goals. Some are pure while others are preliminary. Confusing His pure goals with His preliminary goals would make it hard to know why He created the world, so in anything He does, we have to first stop to ask where His action falls on the spectrum between means and ends, whether it's a step toward a pure goal or the pure goal itself.
Highest Priorities
Highest priorities are a different lens through which to observe a person's goals. Let's say you determine that someone desires a thing for its own sake, making it a pure goal. That doesn't really tell you much about how important that goal is to the person overall. Jumping into a swimming pool and taking care of one's family may both be pure goals, but we should hope that one is a much higher overall priority in life. So we all have a hierarchy of priorities for our goals, from highest goals to lesser goals.
Sometimes a preliminary goal from one task can be higher than a pure goal from another task. Let's say a man inherits a huge mansion in his hometown and takes a trip back to sign the papers and close the deal. Several things run through his mind. He's excited about the estate, but not for its own sake. His apartment is already big enough. He's just looking forward to the prestige such a mansion will bring him. In this sense, inheriting the estate is a preliminary goal, but it's preliminary to a high life priority: prestige. On the other hand, he's excited about seeing all his old friends, as a pure goal. But seeing his friends isn't nearly as high of a life priority as prestige is, so he values the inheritance of this mansion—though preliminary to a pure goal—more than the pure, simple pleasure of seeing his friends. All that to say, occasionally a preliminary goal of one project will actually be more important than a pure goal of some other project.
Each of us has major life goals, and each of us has simple pleasures that sweeten daily life. To determine something as complex as why God created the world, we will have to keep our eyes on this distinction as well. Not all pure goals are lifetime objectives, and amidst the thousands of goals which God sets (and successfully accomplishes) in the course of human history, we have to distinguish between the lesser ones and the highest one.
Personal Desires
To complete our understanding of motives and goals, we need to add one important final layer: personality and experiences. Goals don't get formulated in vacuums. They are developed by people with personal desires. So you should always consider whether a goal stems from something inherent in someone's personality (an absolute goal) or because of an experience that person had in the course of life (a consequential goal).
Take the example of a successful young man who comes from a big family and has plenty of good friends. He always has people to talk to, but he still longs to find a woman to marry. Does that desire come from some prolonged experience of loneliness or because of something inherent about who he is? In most cases we would say it's simply inherent. It's not a response to something. That makes it an absolute goal.
Let's say he finds a wife and they eventually start a family. Over time he may develop ideas of what it means to be a good father and outline an entire philosophy about raising children. It's important to remember, though, that he didn't fall in love with his wife for his children's sake. He fell in love with his wife due to an absolute goal. His children's existence and all his goals regarding them are simply consequences of his pursuit of a more inherent, absolute goal. This doesn't mean his children and his hopes for them are any less important. It just reminds us that they are consequential goals and so can't be the explanations for things which he did before they existed.
Conclusion
There are several immediate takeaways from all of these categories. Take this last set, for example. We are a consequence of God's decision to create. Now that we are here, He loves us. He even decided to enter human history to save us. But all of that comes as a consequence of His initial decision to create something at all. So what motivated that initial decision? What was His absolute goal?
We always start with ourselves. But if we aren't eternal, then something which is eternal, some absolute goal which was important to God before the idea of creation, must be what motivated Him to start the process. Think of it like this. Is it possible that God could have created the world out of pity for us? No. You can't pity something that doesn't exist. Pity assumes the existence of the one to be pitied. The same applies to love. It sounds poetic to say God created the world out of His love for us, but that assumes that we have always been here to love. We weren't. We had to be thought up. So why did God think us up in the first place?
God's love for justice and hatred of injustice explain why He does some things in human history now. They are, without a doubt, part of His consequential goals. But that should not lead us to think that He created the world in order to have the pleasure of settling our disputes. In fact, we have to suppose that something earlier—something more basic and inherent—must have motivated Him to create in the first place.
Without a motivation rooted in His nature—not because of some circumstance or consequence of creation—nothing would have moved Him to take on the task of creation. Therefore an original, absolute goal must have led to it. That inherent desire is the fountainhead of all creation and in fact of all other goals.
"So," you ask, "what is that absolute, pure goal?" To answer a question like that, we will simply have to take a closer look at God's personality.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Edwards offers a number of distinctions in this chapter and says they will help us ask the right questions. How would you explain these distinctions in your own words?
2. What are some of your "absolute pure goals"?
3. Describe your feelings as you hear Edwards explain that neither pity nor love for us seems like it could be the reason that first motivated God to create the world.
4. Is the line of thinking that Edwards takes here something that's completely new to you, relatively familiar to you, or somewhere in between?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Why God Created the World by Ben Stevens. Copyright © 2014 Benjamin Stevens. Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
Part I Logic
Chapter 1 Motives: A Few Helpful Distinctions 3
Chapter 2 Good, True, and Beautiful: First Steps Toward an Answer 11
Chapter 3 Set Loose: The Fruits of Creation 17
Chapter 4 One and the Same: How We Fit in the Plan 23
Chapter 5 Objections: Examining God's Character 29
Part II Scripture
Chapter 1 To and Through and For: The Clear Answer in Scripture 39
Chapter 2 A Word and a Process: Defining the Word Glory 45
Chapter 3 Glory: God's Work in History 57
Chapter 4 Then You Will Know: Glory by Another Name 79
Chapter 5 His Daily Delight: God's Love for Humanity 95
Chapter 6 Practical Considerations 111
Appendix A Using this Book for Small-Group Study 117
Appendix B The Story of Jonathan Edwards 123
Appendix C How I Adapted the Text 137
Appendix D Jonathan Edwards'S Original Introduction: "Containing Explanations of Terms and General Positions" 143
About the Author 155