Latest / Reformed Thinking / Can Conscience and Moral Sense Produce True Virtue? | Jonathan Edwards

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Can Conscience and Moral Sense Produce True Virtue? | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. So I want you to imagine a
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person who feels just like crushing, agonizing guilt every
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single time they tell a lie. Right, the kind of guilt that
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keeps you up at night. Yeah, they lose sleep over it.
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Their stomach ties itself in knots.
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And you know, they can recount every time they deceived a
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friend, it makes them physically ill.
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But then they wake up the next morning and just keep right on
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lying. Yes, that is the kicker.
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But for centuries our culture has operated on this very
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specific assumption about a person like that.
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We assume that if they feel terrible, they must have a good
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heart. Spot on.
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We mistake the internal alarm bell for a functioning fire
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engine. We assume that a working
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conscience is the exact way. I mean the identical same thing
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as a virtuous soul. It is an incredibly easy
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assumption to make though, because the symptoms look so
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similar from the outside. Oh, totally.
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When we see someone experiencing remorse, we naturally categorize
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that as evidence of goodness. We think we're looking at a
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clear diagnostic X-ray of their character.
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But human morality does not offer clean lines or simple
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binaries. The diagnostic landscape of the
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human heart is well, it's murky, and the metrics we use to judge
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ourselves are often completely unreliable.
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That brings us to our focus. For this deep dive into the
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source material, we are unpacking an essay by the 18th
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century theologian Jonathan Edwards.
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Yes, a really fascinating text. It is a specific section titled
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Of Natural Conscience in the Moral Sense, which is pulled
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from his much larger work on the Nature of True Virtue.
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And our mission today is to completely dismantle that common
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misunderstanding about guilt and goodness.
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We are going to look at how Edwards completely separates
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these two concepts. He makes a staggering case that
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the guilt you feel or your innate sense of justice is
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actually driven by self love. Yeah, it is not driven by
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genuine goodness at all, which is a tough pill to swallow.
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It really is. The way Edwards diagnosis human
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psychology in this text from the 1700s is just brilliant.
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It reads like a modern psychological profile.
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It really does. We're going to map out his
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entire argument piece by piece. We will look at the internal
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mechanics of the conscience, and we will examine why it mimics
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true virtue so convincingly that it fools almost everyone.
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And we will look into how a person can possess A flawless
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moral compass while remaining completely devoid of actual
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goodness. So let's start with the
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psychological root of the issue. Before we can grasp why
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conscience is distinct from true virtue, we have to isolate what
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actually causes that uneasy feeling we identify as guilt.
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Right. What is the engine there?
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Edwards introduces the concept of the natural conscience as a
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principle that arises entirely from self love.
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He uses the term self union. The mechanism here is
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fascinating because it completely reorients how we view
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our own internal alarms. Yeah, he argues that humans
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possess a natural disposition to feel uneasy when they are
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inconsistent with themselves. This internal friction is the
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engine of the natural conscience.
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Right. Yes, Edwards explains that this
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friction occurs when we do something to another person that
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we would be furious about if it were done to us.
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He defines this mechanism as a private principle.
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A private principle is simply an inclination to agree with
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ourselves, to maintain our own internal comfort and
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consistency. OK.
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And he contrasts that right. He contrasts this private
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principle sharply with true virtue, which he defines as a
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public and divine principle. True virtue is a union of the
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heart with all beings and with God himself.
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It is an outward facing love. Whereas the natural conscience
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is an inward facing preservation tactic.
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Precisely. I think we need to linger on
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that distinction because guilt is almost universally framed as
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a noble trait in modern society. Oh absolutely.
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If you do something terrible and feel awful about it, people will
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comfort you by saying that your guilt proves you are a good
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person. At least you feel bad about.
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It, yeah, but Edwards traces that terrible feeling of guilt
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right back to basic self preservation.
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All about the self. When you harm someone else, you
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unconsciously swap places with them in your mind because you
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love yourself so fiercely. Imagining that specific harm
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happening to you causes an immediate psychological
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rebellion. Your mind recoils at the thought
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of being treated that way. That recoil is what Edwards
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calls an inward war. Yeah, that's a great term for
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it, an inward war. You are actively choosing to
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commit an action, let's say betraying a friend's trust,
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while simultaneously rejecting the idea of that betrayal being
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done to you. And because yourself love is the
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dominant force in your life, doing wrong creates a violent
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internal clash. You are effectively disagreeing
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with yourself. Yes, you are choosing to execute
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an action that your own self love utterly condemns.
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It is a state of severe internal dissonance.
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You know, this makes me think of a computer experiencing A fatal
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logic error. OK, walk me through that.
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Imagine you were writing a program, and you code a machine
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to completely reject a specific command under all circumstances.
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Yeah, it is a hardwired rule in the system to refuse that
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command, right? But then you force the system to
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execute that very same command anyway.
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The system crashes. Yes, the system crashes.
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It cannot hold 2 completely contradictory states at the same
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time. The operating system just fails.
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That makes a lot of sense. Guilt is essentially the human
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operating system crashing due to a logic error created by our own
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self love. We cannot maintain internal
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peace when our actions contradict our own demands for
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how we should be treated. The concept of a system crash
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captures the mechanics of natural conscience so well.
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It really does the uneasiness, the sleepless nights, the
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anxiety of guilt that is the crash.
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You just can't hold both realities comfortably.
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You. Cannot love yourself, demand
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fair treatment for yourself and then treat others unfairly
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without causing a malfunction in your own psychological software.
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What is so striking about Edwards analysis is how this
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reorients our understanding of everyday human behavior.
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It really does. If you take this framework and
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apply it to something as simple as an everyday apology, the
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implications are actually quite uncomfortable.
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Oh, for sure it. Forces you to question the
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motivation behind saying you are sorry.
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When we apologize to someone we have wronged, are we doing it
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because we genuinely love that person and care about their
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flourishing? Or are we just trying to resolve
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our own internal software crash so we can feel comfortable in
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our own heads again? Wow, it forces a severe RE
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evaluation of human motivation. If the primary driver of the
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natural conscience is avoiding internal inconsistency, then an
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apology driven entirely by the conscience is essentially an
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exercise in self soothing. You just want the uneasy feeling
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to stop. You want the alarm bells to turn
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off? True virtue operating in Edwards
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framework would motivate an apology out of a genuine,
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selfless love for the other person's well-being.
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And that love operates independently of your own
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internal discomfort. The natural conscience seeks
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peace for the self. True virtue seeks the good of
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the other. They look identical from the
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outside, but their root motivations are entirely
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different. So if this internal logic error
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relies entirely on putting ourselves in another person's
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shoes, we have to look at how Edwards explains that mental
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leap. Right.
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How do we actually pull off that swap in our heads?
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It feels automatic, but Edwards breaks down the process.
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He notes that we conceive of what others feel, their love,
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their pain, their desires, only by recalling our own conscious
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experiences and substituting ourselves into their place.
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He is highly specific about how this happens.
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Yeah, he points out that this mental substitution occurs
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habitually, spontaneously and instantaneously.
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It is so seamless and rapid that most people cannot even give a
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rational account of doing it. We use our own mental states as
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the raw material to build our understanding of everyone else
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in the world. We do not have direct access to
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anyone else's consciousness, so we borrow from our own
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historical data to imagine their reality.
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The text even takes this a step further and applies this
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mechanism to how we form our concept of God.
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That part is fascinating. Edwards says we take our own
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internal experiences of understanding, of volition, of
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love. We remove the limits and
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imperfections, and we ascribe those elevated traits to the
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Creator. We simply have no other way to
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conceive of any mind, whether human or divine, except by
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starting with our own consciousness as the baseline.
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We take the ideas we obtain through our own internal
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experiences and transfer them. It is the only conceptual
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vocabulary we possess. Wait hold on, I am getting stuck
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here. OK, what's the hang up?
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This sounds like a massive philosophical trap.
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How so? Well, if my entire understanding
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of other people's pain and even my entire understanding of God's
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mind is just a modified projection of my own personal
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feelings, aren't I just trapping myself in a hall of mirrors?
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I see where you're going. How is this not just infinite
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narcissism if God is just a scaled up version of my own
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consciousness? How does Edwards avoid the trap
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of just creating God in our own image?
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That is an incredibly astute pushback and it gets to the
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heart of the theological challenge here.
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Good, I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing that.
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Edwards anticipates this trap. He addresses it by stating that
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while we must use our consciousness as the raw data
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because we literally have nothing else to work with, we
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must actively deny limits and remove changeableness when
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ascribing these traits to God. Deny limits, right?
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We use the building blocks of human consciousness, but we
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scale them to Infinity. OK, give me an example of that.
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For example, we know what knowledge is because we
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experienced knowing things in our daily lives.
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To conceive of God's knowledge, we take our concept of knowing,
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strip away our ignorance, strip away our capacity to forget,
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strip away our need to learn over time, and we arrive at
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omniscience. Oh, I see.
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We know what love is. We take that concept, strip away
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our selfishness, our fickleness, our conditions, and we arrive at
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divine benevolence. It is wild how modern this all
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sounds. It really is ahead of its time.
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Centuries before cognitive science mapped out empathy and
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developed the theory of mind, Edwards identified that empathy
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is essentially rapid fire unconscious simulation.
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Yes, he recognized that to engage with the moral weight of
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an action, we run a lightning fast simulation in our minds
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where we are the recipient of the action.
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He is describing the exact, sorry, I mean the precise
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psychological mechanism that researchers study today.
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Mirror neurons and cognitive empathy rely on this very
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process of internal simulation. We instruct a model of another
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person's mind using our own mind as the template.
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Think about watching a video of someone stubbing their toe on a
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piece of furniture. Ouch.
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Yeah, you immediately wince, but you wince not because you
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physically feel their nerve endings firing.
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Right, you have no connection to their nervous system.
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Instead, your brain instantaneously downloads your
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own past memory of toe stubbing, pastes that memory onto the
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other person, and creates A sympathetic shock in your own
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body. You are experiencing a
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simulation of their pain based entirely on your own historical
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data. And it all happens in a fraction
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of a second and. That rapid fire simulation is
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the absolute groundwork for the moral judgments we make.
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Which leads us into the next major section of Edwards's
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thought. He outlines 2 two distinct ways
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the natural conscience uses those projections to judge right
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and wrong. He builds A framework based on 2
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pillars of conscience. The first pillar is what we were
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just talking about, the disposition to approve or
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disapprove of treatment based on self consistency.
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It is the psychological mechanism behind the Golden
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Rule. Yes, you feel uneasy when you
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treat someone in a way you would hate to be treated because you
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are running that internal simulation of their pain.
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That first pillar is entirely about personal feeling.
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It is about avoiding internal friction and maintaining your
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own psychological comfort. But the second pillar operates
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on a completely different frequency.
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Edwards calls it a sense of desert.
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This is a natural recognition of the agreement, proportion and
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harmony between certain actions and their reactions.
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So if the first pillar is an emotional alarm bell triggered
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by self love, the second pillar feels much more mathematical.
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Yes, it is a recognition of moral physics.
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The conscience sees that if someone causes an injury,
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justice demands an equal and opposite reaction.
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It demands resentment and punishment.
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Conversely, if someone shows extraordinary kindness, there is
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a natural agreement that they should be rewarded.
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Every action requires A proportionate reaction to keep
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the universe balanced. It is entirely about symmetry.
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The natural conscience possesses an apparent appreciation for
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order. It craves A balanced scale.
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Edwards argues that the conscience approves of God's
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judgments because it recognizes the sheer logic of them.
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It is a matter of proportion. Since we receive absolutely
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everything from the Creator, our lives, our breath, our
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provision, it is perfectly proportionate and uniform that
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we owe supreme respect and obedience back to Him.
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Opposing the infinite creator logically deserves infinite
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opposition. The math just works.
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Let's use an analogy to clarify this sense of desert.
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OK, Imagine an auditor sitting in a sterile room looking at a
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massive spreadsheet for a corporation.
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The auditor's entire job is to ensure the columns balance out.
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They look at the Ledger and see that a massive debt has been
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incurred, but then they see a corresponding payment that
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zeroes out the account. And the auditor feels a sense of
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satisfaction. The Ledger is clean.
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The math is perfect. But approving of the math on a
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spreadsheet is an entirely different reality from joyfully
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taking your own money out of your own wallet and donating it
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to charity. Yes.
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One is an appreciation for cold symmetry, the other is true
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virtue. That distinction is the hinge
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upon which Edward's entire argument swings.
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You can deeply, well you can intensely appreciate the
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symmetry of a balanced Ledger without possessing a single drop
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of generosity in your heart. In the I mean, in the very same
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way your natural conscience can appreciate the symmetry of
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divine justice without possessing a single drop of true
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virtue. The conscience loves the order.
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The virtuous heart loves the goodness itself.
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If we expand on this, you can clearly see how our entire
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societal justice system operates almost exclusively on this sense
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of desert. It has to, right?
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The law requires A proportionate punishment for a crime to
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satisfy the publics natural conscience.
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When someone commits A heinous crime and receives A remarkably
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light sentence, society is universally outraged.
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Why? Because the math is wrong.
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The Ledger does not balance. The natural conscience demands
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an eager weight placed on the other side of the scale to
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restore the harmony of justice. Society absolutely relies on
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that mechanism to function. God instituted the natural
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conscience, complete with its demand for symmetry, to maintain
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order in the fallen world. It restrains evil.
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It builds legal systems. It keeps civilization from
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tearing itself apart. But because this mathematical
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sense of justice can perfectly aligned with God's law on paper,
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it is incredibly easy to mistake a functioning conscience for a
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virtuous heart. That perfectly sets up what
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Edwards viewed as the catastrophic error of his era.
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Because this mathematical spreadsheet of justice works so
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efficiently to keep society functioning, it completely
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blinded the thinkers of his day. They looked at the system and
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made a massive misdiagnosis about human nature.
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Edwards dedicates a huge portion of his essay to calling out the
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moralists and philosophies who looked at human empathy and the
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conscience and drew the absolute wrong conclusion.
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The leading moralists of the 18th century argued that the
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universal moral sense in mankind was hard evidence of a naturally
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implanted, truly benevolent temper.
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They observed the fact that humans generally approve of
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kindness, that we build justice systems, and that we disapprove
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of cruelty. From these observations, they
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concluded that humanity is inherently good at its core.
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They confused the resting of evil with the presence of
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genuine holiness. Edward steps in to completely
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dismantle that conclusion. He argues that the natural
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conscience can approve of true virtue.
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It can look at justice and appreciate its uniformity
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without ever actually tasting its primary and essential
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beauty. He uses highly specific sensory
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language there, tasting versus seeing.
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The natural conscience sees the logic.
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True. Virtue tastes the sweetness of
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benevolence. I want to spend some time on
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that specific phrasing because it is such a vivid, striking
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distinction. Brilliant.
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What does it actually mean to taste the sweetness of virtue
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versus just seeing the logic of it?
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How do we identify the difference in our own lives?
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Yeah. How do we know which one is
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operating in US? Edwards answers this by pointing
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back to the fundamental distinction between private and
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divine principles. True virtue, as he defines it,
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is a union of heart to being in general.
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It loves goodness for what it is in itself, not for how it
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balances the scales or maintains societal order.
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Tasting the sweetness means you actively desire the good of
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others, and you desire the glory of God as an end in itself.
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You find unshakeable joy in it. Seeing the logic simply means
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you recognize that benevolence makes the system run smoothly
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and keeps you out of trouble. To prove this, he offers an
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argument that I find totally devastating.
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Lay it on me. He points out that if conscience
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and a virtuous heart were the precise same thing, then a
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person's level of guilt would perfectly match their level of
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holiness. Remorse would equal repentance.
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Right. The worse you feel about your
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actions, the closer to God you would be.
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If the moralists of his day were right, then guilt is a
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sanctifying force. But Edwards points out that this
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is demonstrably false in everyday human experience.
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You see this dynamic so clearly in the tragedy of addiction or
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even just persistent destructive habits.
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Person caught in addiction often sins against immense blinding
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light. They know full well what they're
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doing. Their conscience screams at them
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at maximum volume. They wake up the next morning
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with crushing, terrible remorse. They can clearly see the
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destruction they are causing to their own bodies, the pain they
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are inflicting on their families and the ruin of their careers.
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The math of their failure is completely obvious to them.
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The Ledger is entirely in the red.
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Yet despite seeing all of this with perfect clarity, their
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hearts desire remains completely unchanged.
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The massive divergent between their crushing guilt and their
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continuing actions proves Edward's point entirely.
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Seeing the math of your failure does not change your appetite.
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The conscience could be fully awake, fully operational and
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completely accurated its assessment, while the heart
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remains totally hostile to virtue.
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A person can hate the consequences of their actions.
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They can hate the internal fliction and the psychological
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pain of their guilt. And yet they can still
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completely love the sin itself. They desperately want the
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uneasiness to stop, but they have absolutely no desire to
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become holy. That brings us to the final,
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ultimate proof Edwards offers. To completely shatter the idea
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that a perfect conscience equals a good heart, he fast forwards
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to the end of human history. He presents a flawless
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theological stress test centered on the day of judgement.
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It is the ultimate testing ground for his theory of the
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conscience. Edwards argues that on the
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future day of Judgment, God will set every sinner's deeds in
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perfect order before them. There will be no hidden
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variables, no missing context, and no room for debate.
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The text says that all stupidity of conscience will end.
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Every rationalization, every excuse, every blind spot we use
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to justify our actions will be stripped away.
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Their consciences will be fully awakened to reality, and they
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will see the undeniable justice of their sentence.
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Edward says they will actually join the judge in condemning
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themselves. Their sense of desert will be
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functioning at absolute flawless perfection.
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They will see the infinite greatness of God.
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They will see their infinite obligation to Him as creatures
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who received everything from His hand.
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And they will clearly see that their lifelong rebellion
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warrants an infinite punishment. The Ledger will be perfectly
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clear and the math will be undeniably correct.
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They will appreciate the symmetry of the justice being
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handed down. This is where the paradox hits
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hardest. If conscience were the same
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thing as virtue, this moment of perfect moral moral clarity
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would mean they're perfectly holy.
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If knowing the good equals doing the good, and if agreeing with
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justice equals loving justice, that a fully awakened conscience
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at the judgement seat would instantly turn every Sinner into
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a St. The mere influx of perfect
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information would cure the disease of the heart.
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But that does not happen. Edwards points out that instead
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of being changed by this perfect clarity, they will be given up
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to their wickedness. They'll become like devils.
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Their sin and hostility will rage like an unrestrained fire,
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even as their own internal conscience fully agrees with the
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punishment they are receiving. That is a staggering scenario to
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try and comprehend. We usually operate under the
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assumption that if someone truly understands the gravity of the
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wrongdoings, they will soften. They will breakdown, they will
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repent, and they will change. We base our entire restorative
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justice system on this idea. But Edwards paints a picture
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where perfect intellectual understanding and perfect hatred
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coexist in the exact, I mean, the absolute same mind forever.
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It is the starkest possible demonstration of his thesis.
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A person can possess 100% moral clarity alongside 0% moral
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goodness. The sinners at the judgment see
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the greatness of the being they rebelled against.
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They recognize their obligations.
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They see the precise, flawless proportion of their punishment.
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Yet, possessing all of that knowledge, they do not have a
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single drop of benevolent temper.
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They have no love for God's beauty.
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They see the light, but they hate the light.
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I want to think about the implications of this for you,
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the listener, in your day-to-day life.
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It gets very personal. We live in an era that worships
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information. We constantly seek more data,
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assuming that if we just know better, we will inevitably do
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better. We buy books on habit formation.
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We listen to deep dives. We gather endless data on how to
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be better people. We think that ignorance is our
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only real problem. But Edwards argues that
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information and conviction are completely separate mechanisms
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from a renewal of the hearts actual desires.
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You can have all the conviction in the world and remain entirely
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unchanged. It forces a massive reevaluation
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of our own spiritual state. We can no longer rely on the
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fact that we feel bad about our mistakes as a hard evidence that
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our hearts are right. We cannot point to our ability
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to spot injustice in the world or our outrage over political
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corruption as proof of our own inherent goodness.
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The natural conscience is a brilliant, necessary mechanism
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given by God to keep the world from descending into absolute
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chaos, but it cannot save you. It cannot regenerate a heart.
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It cannot make you love God. Let's synthesize everything we
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have covered today, because we have walked through a massive
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amount of psychological and theological ground.
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The core take away from Edwards essay is this.
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The natural conscience is a mechanism born of self love.
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It seeks internal consistency to avoid psychological pain, and it
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seeks mathematical justice to maintain harmony in the world.
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It can perfectly identify right and wrong.
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It could even fully agree with the rigorous demands of the law
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of God. But it cannot produce true
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virtue. True virtue is an actual love
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and taste for goodness itself, independent of self
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preservation. I want to bring this directly to
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your own experience. Think about the last time you
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felt a sharp pang of guilt, or the last time you felt a surge
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of righteous indignation about a headline you read.
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Pause and look under the hood of your own mind.
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Are you reacting out of a genuine love for what is good?
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Do you possess a true union of heart with God and your fellow
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human beings? Or are you just trying to quiet
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the uncomfortable alarms of your own self preservation?
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Are you just acting like an auditor, demanding that the
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spreadsheet of the universe balances out so you can feel
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comfortable? It strips away all of the
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comforting illusions we hold about our own righteousness.
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We have to look past the superficial X-ray of our working
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conscience and examine the actual desires running
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underneath. Which leaves us with a final
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thought to chew on long after the audio stops today.
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We started this conversation by talking about the murky waters
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of human morality and the broken diagnostic X-ray of guilt.
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Edwards has handed us a much sharper lens to scan our own
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motives. But it raises a highly
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unsettling question if our internal moral compass can
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Florida State point to true north while our actual desires
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and actions actively run South? How can we ever trust our own
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motivations when we do the right thing?
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This. Genuine goodness requires to
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completely forget ourselves.