What’s in a Name?: “Christian Hedonism”?

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Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.

-Job 13:15a-

After these things, the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying;

 Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.

-Genesis 15:1-

John Piper’s  “Christian Hedonism,” [1] an increasing influence upon American Evangelical Christianity, demands careful review in light of Holy Scripture, and by comparison with the doctrinal position of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), renowned for the timelessness of his biblical/theological leadership.  We applaud pastor-scholar-writer Dr. John Piper’s call for biblical study of the concept of  pleasure as it relates to the knowledge of God.  While hyperbole may have its place, any misrepresentation does not, whether of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), allegedly at odds with Edwards, or of Jonathan Edwards himself, from whose theology “Christian Hedonism” is allegedly derived.

Hedonism

To be sure, God cannot deny himself [2] by prescribing moral law for which obedience from the heart would not ultimately bring blessing.  Yet because of universal human disobedience, [3] a cross was interposed which excludes all boasting. [4]  

Hedonism and Theism represent conflicting philosophical positions.  Hedonism evokes  images of Nero as depicted in the classic motion picture Quo Vadis, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, the Kardashian family, and the life of playwright Oscar Wilde.

Hedonism, often a product of boredom [5], identifies pleasure per se as the primary end or goal of life.  As a philosophy, Hedonism has contempt for all boundaries to pleasure. [6]  “Life is too short to waste by spending it with unpleasant people!” a youth was heard to say.

Paradoxically, the greatest pleasure or satisfaction may be subordinating one’s pleasure to the pleasure of others. [7]

Theism

Theism is the philosophical category which includes the Judaeo-Christian world view.  The Christian world view is God-centered, that is, theistic, and specifically trinitarian, rather than hedonistic, i.e., pleasure-centered.  Biblical Theism both transcends and defines true human pleasure.

The Old and New Testaments present the central theistic belief that God is personal, and knowable.  Biblical Theism regards the hedonistic urge per se as something that needs to be brought into submission to God and his Word. [8]  The unchecked hedonistic urge brought catastrophe to Eden, separating all humankind from Eden’s divinely-provided pleasures.[9]  By God’s infinite grace, however, pleasure can be redeemed, refined, and redefined.

Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,

By the cross are sanctified;

Joys have I beyond all measure,

Joys that through all time abide. [10]

The Song of Solomon is a paradigm of rapturous progressive pleasure which Christ takes in his redeemed people, the church, as the church yields to him:

1 “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (2:16).

2 “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (6:3).

3 “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is towards me” (7:10).

Objectivism Trumps Hedonism

A friend in Virginia commented, “Jesus began as a carpenter, and later entered the ministry.  By the way, was there anything Jesus made that still exists?”  This writer asked, “Is there anything that exists that Jesus did not make?”  The friend responded,“Now you are getting into metaphysics!”

On more than one occasion, Jonathan Edwards, “America’s first philosopher,” [11]  defended his own engagement in “metaphysics.”

If any should find fault with this reasoning, that it is going a great length into metaphysical niceties and subtleties; I answer, the objection to which they are a reply, is a metaphysical subtlety, and must be treated according to the nature of it. [12]

If Edwards, had lived another forty years, he might well have found Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) quite conversant with his own metaphysical perspective.  The inimitable Kant, who dominated the eighteenth-century philosophical world, [13] depicted morality in the following terms:

. . . although for its application to man morality has need of anthropology, yet, in the first instance, we must treat it [morality] independently as pure philosophy, i.e., as metaphysics, complete in itself. [14]

Kant distinguished his Categorical Imperative from hypothetical imperatives which are based upon prudence with the end of happiness in view.  Since men are not omniscient, Kant reasoned, they cannot guarantee that happiness will result. [15]

The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i.e., as objectively necessary. [16]

Kant insisted that “there is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” [17]  Edwards, no doubt, would simply have identified Kant’s “maxim” as the embodiment of the two greatest commandments [18] or “the law of faith” [19] –that faith, of course, “which worketh through love.” [20]

But it was not merely Kant’s engagement in metaphysics per se in order to establish the Categorical Imperative that would have piqued Edwards’s philosophical prowess, nor the fact that Scripture readily provided a universal maxim in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, it was the fact that Kant, in order to establish ethical objectivity, ruled out the motivation of reward thereby freeing the Imperative from self-interest.  For this was precisely what Edwards himself had done in his Treatise on Religious Affections when he stated that

the first objective ground of gracious affections is the transcendently excellent and amiable nature of divine things, as they are in and of themselves; and not any conceived relation they bear to self, or self-interest. [21]

It could seem that Immanuel Kant borrowed from Edwards in setting forth the Categorical Imperative!  Clearly Kant’s ruling out “the motivation of reward” “in order to establish ethical objectivity” reflected Edwards’ “first objective ground of gracious affections.”

Only in a secondary sense did Edwards recognize the role of personal pleasure or happiness as a motivating factor in the Christian life.

If after a man loves God, it will be a consequence and fruit of this, that even love to his own happiness will cause him to desire the glorifying and enjoying of God; it will not thence follow, that the very exercise of self-love went before his love to God, and that his love to God was a consequence and fruit of that.  Something else, entirely distinct from self-love, might be the cause of this, viz.  a change made in the views of his mind, and relish of his heart; whereby he apprehends a beauty, glory, and supreme good, in God’s nature, as it is in itself.  This may be the thing that first draws his heart to him, and causes his heart to be united to him, prior to all considerations of his own self-interest or happiness, although after this, and as a fruit of it, he necessarily seeks his own interest and happiness in God. [22]

Divine Sovereignty

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve;

I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health, that I might do greater things;

I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy;

I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men;

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life;

I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for–but everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am among all men, most richly blessed.

-Attributed to an anonymous Confederate soldier [23]

The term “Christian Hedonism,” however provocative, too readily lends itself to the notion that God exists for man’s pleasure rather than the fact that man was created for God’s glory.  Thus, it turns things upside down!

Those whose affection to God is founded first on his profitableness to them, begin at the wrong end. [24]

From the moment of his conversion, “Absolute sovereignty” was what Jonathan Edwards loved “to ascribe to God!” [25] That is the high water mark of theological objectivism–albeit joyful objectivism.  In the case of Saul of Tarsus, his motive was to destroy the church until the instant that God smote him with blindness knocking him from his horse and speaking, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” [26]  Following Saul’s  conversion to Christ, God said to Ananias, “I must show him what great things he must suffer for my Name’s sake.” [27]  This was not Christian “hedonism,” but rather divine sovereignty— the divine sovereignty associated with Christian Theism.  Jonathan Edwards recognized that the system of Christian doctrine which made man most dependent upon God in the matter of salvation was the system that most glorified God! [28]  That was the theme of his famous Thursday lecture in Boston entitled “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence.”  Saul of Tarsus, the paradigm of grace, [29] perfectly illustrates this theme.

O Joy that seekest me thru pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow thru the rain,

and feel the promise is not vain

That morn shall tearless be. [30]

 End Notes

[1]. See John Piper’s online article at http://www.desiringgod.org/resource/christian-hedonism.

[2]. 2 Tim. 2:13

[3]. Rom. 3:23, 9:31-32

[4]. Romans 5:12-21; Gal. 6:14

[5]. Ravi Zacharias so depicted Hedonism before a national TV audience on 2/9/2015.

[6]. This may well account for the recent U.S. Supreme Court’s order for the removal of the Ten Commandments from a Southern court room.

[7]. See James Walter Gustafson’s extended discussion of Hedonism in The Quest for Truth: An Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 125-135

[8].  1 John 2:16

[9]. Gen. 3:6-9, 22-24

[10]. From John Bowring’s hymn: “In the Cross of Christ I Glory”, Covenant Hymnal, p. 190

[11].Will Durant spoke of Jonathan Edwards as “the first American philosopher” in The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers of the Western World, p. 365.

[12]. Jonathan Edwards, Works, 1879, 1:74

[13]. Durant, p. 192

[14]. Samuel Enoch Stumpf, Philosophical Problems: Selected Readings, p. 36

[15]. Stumpf, p. 39

[16]. Stumpf, p. 37 emphasis mine

[17]. Stumpf, p. 41

[18]. Matthew 22:36-40 Will Durant noted that while the Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Du Spinoza (1632-1677)  did not accept the divinity of Christ, he “puts him first among men.”  Spinoza regarded Jesus as “sent to teach not only the Jews, but the whole human race.” “The eternal wisdom of God” has shown itself . . . chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.” p. 127

[19]. Rom. 3:27

[20]. Gal. 5:6

[21]. On Religious Affections, Works, 1:274.

[22]. On Religious Affections, Works, 2:275

[23]. Steve Halliday, How Great Thou Art: 305 Reasons Why God is Awesome, Day 342

[24]. Edwards, Religious Affections, Works, 1879 1:275; quoted in David C Brand, Profile of the Last Puritan: Jonathan Edwards, Self-Love, and the Dawn of the Beatific, p. 68

[25]. Edwards,Works, vol.1, p. lv quoted fully in.Brand’s Profile, p. 12 emphasis mine

[26]. Acts 9:4

[27]. Acts 9:16

[28]. Brand, Profile of the Last Puritan, 103-104

[29]. 1 Cor. 15:9-11; Ephes. 3:1-13

[30]. From George Matheson’s hymn: “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go”, Covenant Hymnal, p. 436

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Sources

Brand, David C. 1991.  Profile of the Last Puritan: Jonathan Edwards, Self-Love, and the Dawn of the Beatific. The American Academy of Religion. Academy Series. Edited by Susan Thistlethwaite. Atlanta: Scholars Press

Covenant Hymnal, The. 1973. Chicago: Covenant Press.

Durant, Will. n.d. The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers of the Western World. New York: A Touchstone Book Published by Simon and Schuster.

Edwards, Jonathan. 1879. The works of Jonathan Edwards, A.M., rev. & ed., Edward Hickman, 2 vols. 12^th edition. London: William Tegg & Co.

Gustafson, James Walter. 1992 [1998] The Quest for Truth: an Introduction to Philosophy. Fourth Edition. Needham Heights, Massachusetts: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing

Halliday, Steve, How Great Thou Art: 365 Reasons why God is Awesome, Day 342.

Holy Bible. 1611. King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Kant, Immanuel. 1909. “Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, translated by T. K. Abbott, Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., London reproduced in Samueal Enoch Stumpf’s Philosophical Problems: Selected Readings in Ethics, Religion, Political Philosophy, Epistemology, and Metaphysics. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1971.

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource/christian-hedonism

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About the Writer

David Clark Brand is a retired pastor and educator with missionary experience in Korea and Arizona. He and his wife now reside in Wooster, Ohio, where they first met at a Presbyterian youth conference. They have four grown children and seven grandchildren. With a B.A. in the Liberal Arts, an M. Div., and a Th.M. in Church History, Dave continues to enjoy study and writing. One of his books, a contextual study of the life and thought of Jonathan Edwards, was published by the American Academy of Religion via Scholars Press in Atlanta.