So what Edwards was trying to do in his definition of depravity - by focusing on the negative, narrow, confined, constricted sense of self-love was to show, in the end, that every act of love performed without a supreme regard for God as the object of delight has no true virtue in it. In other words, his treatment of self-love, like everything else he wrote, was aimed at defending the centrality and supremacy of God in all things. The only public life of an evangelical that counts as virtuous is one that savors and celebrates the supremacy of God as the ground and goal of its public acts.

Now one might think that Edwards has pushed the God-centeredness of virtue as far as it can go. What more can he say about the public virtue of Christians that would exalt God more or make him more central in it? Well, he has not gone as far as he can go. There is one more crucial question he raises about self-love and public virtue.

Self-Love Needs Transforming Grace

He asks, What if self-love does rise high enough and expand broadly enough to embrace the world and even God? Is there any reason to think that this embracing of God might not be virtuous? His answer is, Yes. He points out that "self-love" - even the neutral kind that is not evil in itself, the kind that is simply a love of happiness - is still a merely human and natural trait. It is not spiritual. It is not wrought by the Spirit of God. It does not require a work of special grace. This means that if embracing God can be accounted for merely from the root of such self-love, then it will be a merely natural thing wrought by what is resident in human nature. And though God be at the top of it, he will not be at the bottom of it. Man will be. If that were possible, we will have wrought our own virtue. And God would not be supreme in the cause of virtue, even when being the apparent goal.

I say "apparent goal" because what Edwards shows is that when self-love alone is at work to produce virtue, without any special saving, transforming grace - without the awakening work of the Holy Spirit - then self-love inevitably embraces God not for the beauty of his glory in itself, but for the natural benefits God gives. Mere self-love savors the gifts of God without savoring fellowship with God himself. And this, Edwards says, is not a true embracing of God himself. It is an embracing of the self, and of God only inasmuch as he makes much of the self. It is not true virtue, though it can be very religious. Here's the way he puts it:

This is . . . the difference between the joy of the hypocrite, and the joy of the true saint. The [hypocrite] rejoices in himself; self is the first foundation of his joy: the [true saint] rejoices in God. . . . True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God. And this is the spring of all their delights, and the cream of all their pleasures. . . . But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order: they first rejoice. . . that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground, he seems in a sort, lovely to them.

In other words, self-love alone simply cannot produce true virtue - private or public - because it is merely natural and has no truly spiritual or supernatural taste or perception of divine beauty. Because of the fall, self-love is blind and seared in its capacity to discern and delight in the glory of God. It is, as the apostle says, not merely natural, but "dead in trespasses and sins." "The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them" (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Another way to say it is that self-love moves us to embrace what we perceive will make us happy, but self-love does not have the power to make what is good and true and beautiful look attractive. Self-love alone may move one person to make money, another to seek power, another to be a philanthropist, another to steal and kill, and another to pray and read the Bible and preach. But it is not self-love that decides what appears to the mind as most attractive and valuable.