Recent theological scholarship has increasingly emphasized the missional church movement as a vital response to contemporary cultural contexts, including postmodernism, post-Christianity, and globalization. This movement fundamentally shifts from previous strategic models of missionary engagement, focusing instead on God’s mission (missio Dei). Four key characteristics define this missional approach: recognizing God as the initiator who sends the church into the world, the close connection between God’s mission and the Kingdom of God, the incarnational practice of ministry adapted to diverse cultural contexts, and the active participation of all believers as disciples engaged in mission. Thus, the missional church actively engages culture to authentically reflect God’s love in the public sphere.
Simultaneously, Christian ethics has seen a resurgence of interest in virtue ethics, emphasizing character formation over strict adherence to rules or principles. Virtue ethics provides Christians with the conceptual tools to live consistently and publicly demonstrate their faith in contemporary society. Given these parallel developments, virtue ethics presents itself as a valuable ethical framework to underpin the incarnational ministry practices advocated by the missional church movement.
In exploring the Protestant roots of virtue ethics, Jonathan Edwards emerges as a pivotal figure whose thought bridges evangelical theology and public engagement. Edwards’s virtue ethics significantly departs from Aristotelian-Thomistic traditions, grounding true virtue fundamentally in a trinitarian conception of divine love rather than in habitual moral practices. For Edwards, genuine virtue exists exclusively when God is acknowledged as the ultimate source and goal of moral excellence. His distinctively Christocentric and trinitarian account of virtues such as humility and love offers a robust theological foundation for evangelical engagement in the public sphere.
This paper aims to examine how Edwards’s virtue ethics can enrich a Protestant evangelical approach to public theology, specifically supporting the incarnational emphasis central to missional ecclesiology. Edwards’s theological ethics affirm the inseparable link between divine love and virtuous human action, providing a uniquely Protestant basis for engaging public issues and cultural dialogue. By drawing upon Edwards’s theological insights, evangelical churches can better articulate their public witness, demonstrating God’s incarnational love amid diverse cultural realities.
Ultimately, this presentation contributes to broader conversations within evangelical theology about integrating virtue ethics into missional practices. It argues that Edwards’s theological perspective effectively encourages Protestant churches to embody incarnational ministry within contemporary public contexts, thereby offering a substantial theological resource for evangelical engagement in an increasingly pluralistic society.