Abstract

My aim is two-fold: to highlight some essential and distinctive features of Edwards' theological ethics, and to demonstrate the importance of Ramsey's contribution to our understanding of Edwards' radically theocentric ethics in the context of his vision of the whole drama of creation and redemption. The recent publication of Edwards' "Ethical Writings", edited with Intro, and several illuminating appendices by Ramsey, joins the treatise on "The Nature of True Virtue" to its companion treatise on "The End For Which God Created the World", and makes available a greatly improved and now definitive text of the 15 sermons on "Charity and Its Fruits", which Ramsey rightly calls Edwards' "most important treatise on Christian ethics." The unifying theme of my essay is that participation in the life of God overflowing into the world is a formative and distinctive central theme of Edwards' theological ethics.