“It appears that all that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God.
In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; His fullness is received and returned.
Here is both an emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary.
The beams of glory come from God, are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original.
So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and He is the beginning, and the middle, and the end.”
–Jonathan Edwards, “A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Volume 8, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 8: 526–527, 531.
