Book Review: "God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards by John Piper"

Piper's book is his testimony to what living with Edwards can do. It can invigorate and transform one's Christian heart and mind. For Piper was given essentially the same advice as I was given when he was in seminary, and he too chose Edwards for his constant companion. The first half of Piper's book is his account of how reading Edwards' "God-centered, soul-satisfying, sin-destroying vision of reality" has shaped him over the past thirty years. The second half reprints Edwards' dissertation of The End for Which God Created the World.

In his introduction, Piper strives to convince us of what we shall miss if we don't read Edwards - and particularly if we don't read "The End for Which God Created the World." In general, what we shall miss is what Wheaton professor Mark Noll has called Edwards' "God-entranced worldview" - his "theocentric emphasis." It is possible, Noll says, to get Edwards' piety or his theology secondhand, but it is not possible to get his God-intoxicated vision of life in any other way than by reading him. More specifically, what we shall miss if we don't read "The End for Which God Created the World" is Edwards' biblical, theological, and philosophical defense of the claims that what God seeks, in both creation and redemption, is his own glory and that our reveling in that glory is our only real and ultimate happiness. But, as Piper says, "the depth and wonder and power" of Edwards' book is his demonstration "that these two ends are [not two but] one." God's glory is most fully realized, in other words, in the happiness that his intelligent creatures obtain by seeing and celebrating it. So in seeking his own glory and requiring us to seek his glory, God is not being selfish but rather offering us the greatest good there is - Himself.

This is among the most profound thoughts that can enter a human mind: "God in seeking his glory seeks the good of his creatures, because the emanation" - or outgoing or manifestation - "of his glory...implies the...excellency and happiness of his creatures" (Edwards' text 114). It is one, as Piper realizes, that present-day Evangelicalism, with its "drift...into pragmatic, doctrinally vague, audience-driven, culturally uncritical Christianity" is unlikely even to consider; and it is one that many Christians, when they do consider it, just don't get. Indeed, the situation is even worse than this. For as I have observed elsewhere in this issue, many evangelicals now are arguing that God's glory ought not to be taken to be, the ultimate purpose that all creation serves - that God's seeking his own glory and would indeed be somehow selfish, immoral, and bad. But what follows from accepting that contention is a massive revision of biblical Christianity, including a rejection of the scripturally based claim that God is glorified in the everlasting destruction of the wicked as well as in the everlasting redemption of his saints.

Edwards' book, with Piper's introduction to it, is simply the best way to confront these issues. Edwards' text is tremendously difficult, as we should expect, since it is dealing with an issue that is right at the edge of human comprehension and one that can only be grasped and gloried in through God's Spirit illuminating our minds and regenerating our hearts as we labor to understand some of Scripture's profoundest claims. Piper helps us to understand these life-transforming claims, not only by first surveying Edwards' thought in ways that make it more accessible, but also through his very helpful addition of extra headings and explanatory footnotes to Edwards' text. He has also been wise enough to suggest ways to read Edwards' text that can make it more relevant to the common reader - and he even tells us which parts to skip if we are finding the going too tough.

Here is a book that encourages and enables us to come in direct contact with one of the Christian Church's greatest masters in one of his greatest works, and by that contact to be ushered into a greater appreciation of what the Scriptures themselves say. Crossway Books is to be commended for publishing it; indeed, I hope that they and other evangelical publishers will print many more such texts. In the meantime, I recommend this particular book very highly.

Reprinted by permission from "Modern Reformation," May/June 1999, a publication of Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals