Major Works

The End for Which God Created the World (1765)

In the mid-1750s, Edwards was working on a pair of “dissertations,” one on The End For Which God Created the World, the other on The Nature of True Virtue. They are complementary works. In response to philosophers who would have human happiness as the end for which they were created, Edwards contends that God created the world for God’s own glory. However, since true happiness comes in God, human happiness is a part of God’s glory. There are “ultimate” ends and subsidiary ends that tend towards the same thing. Unfortunately, Edwards did not live to prepare the two dissertations for publication; that task was left to his disciple Samuel Hopkins, who published them together in 1765.

We are in the process of preparing this text for publication in the Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, which currently features some 25,000 pages of Edwards manuscripts. Until the text is ready for digital publication, it can be found in Volume 8 of the Yale Works of Jonathan Edwards.