Excerpts from Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment

“Various tried and proved rules of conduct had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, flat seriousness, stoicism—all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life. He took off his jacket and began to undo his necktie. He yawned again as he repeated to himself: ‘it’s true, it’s really true: I have attained the age of reason.’”1 With such a savour of cynicism, Sartre prefigures what has grown into a substantial stream of modern ‘disillusionment’ with the culture of the Age of Reason.2Many agree that at least the normative epistemological assumptions of our age are under going changes of ‘stomach-churning proportions.’3 While some feel that the ideals of the Enlightenment are on course, there are many who feel that the very core pursuit of the Enlightenment is mistaken, that the question ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’ itself is imprudent.4We are now, it is said, in a post-Enlightenment era. In frustration with sequential methodology’s limits to expressions of our profoundest thoughts, some have tentatively begun to search for another way to frame our intellectual endeavours. This is no doubt in part fuelled by cross-cultural scholarly exchange.5As we come to admit the validity of non-western modes of thought, so we see weaknesses within our own rich vein of intellectual heritage.

However more is at stake than a mere widening of our means to express thought patterns. Rather it may be based on something akin to a denial of our ability to express truth in traditionally ‘enlightened’ certitude. Montesquieu could boldly declare that without laws “le monde ne subsisterait pas,”6 for, “the divinity has its laws, the material world has its laws, the intelligences superior to man have their laws, the beasts have their laws, man has its laws.”7 Who now would dare to put their name to such a claim, even with relation to the material world let alone to man? But, it was this assertion of the possibility of the extension of empirical analysis from scientific experimentation, strictly speaking, to the anthropological study of man that gave the Enlightenment its shape.8 Why could not Newton’s remarkable successes in the physical sciences via empiricism be translated to a similar success in the social sciences? This was the great dream of the Age of Reason. Locke gave an unwavering answer to the foundational problem of human knowledge: “Whence has it [the mind] all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.”9Epistemological certainty ran into the later psychological declaration that “Everything in man can be reduced to sensation,”10and allowed many to expect that dream to be fulfilled.

Yet it is this link in the Enlightenment chain of reasoning that was and is now most in doubt.11Perhaps ironically, then, this weak link is that which has had the greatest effects on theology. For in the assertion that all knowledge must be empirical, knowledge of God has been forced into a different and separate realm. As a description of present reality, there can be little doubt that for many ‘faith’ means not the acceptance of what can be proved but the acceptance of what can not. It is close to the truth, at least, to summarise the broad sweep of our culture in this respect by remarking that, “all this is obvious today and everyone takes it for granted.”12

EDWARDS AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

It is in the context of the Enlightenment and our reassessment of it that Edwards is correctly analysed. Edwards, I will argue, was neither ignorant of the process of Enlightenment nor unwilling to interact with it but actively responded to it. Atight grasp of the nature of this ‘response’ will breathe much needed fresh vitality into the ever expanding organism of Edwards scholarship. This many-headed monster of learning is sometimes profound, often erudite, occasionally exceptional, and as a whole without direction. What is required is a new organising principle upon which the many good studies of Edwards can be hung. As I laboured with the mass of still unpublished Edwards manuscripts it became gradually apparent that not only was this needed, it was evident. The principle of Edwards’ response to the Enlightenment will, however, have significance beyond the confines of historiography. It will provide a valuable case study to complement the developments in our understanding of the history of the Enlightenment. It will also be relevant to the contemporary philosophy and theology that in one way or another takes the Enlightenment as its starting point.

A New Principle for Edwards Scholarship

Anear truism of Edwards scholarship is that he is in some way or other related to both Puritanism and the Enlightenment.13The questions, however, that are often left unasked and always left unanswered are: How? In what way? With what significance for Puritanism? With what significance for the Enlightenment? Around these unanswered questions circles the enigma of Edwards, intriguing because difficult to tie down. Edwards has captivated an extraordinarily varied expanse of scholarship and commentary. He has been analysed as a philosopher, a theologian, a preacher, a pastor, a social theorist, and any number of interdisciplinary minglings.14He has been known in work both as a Hell-fire preacher and an artist,15in thinking both as a Lockean philosopher and a medieval traditionalist,16in character both as a family man and a withdrawn intellectual.17While a chronological progression of the dominant arguments can be constructed, and the matters at debate are fairly constant, the picture of Edwards that emerges displays little focus.18 The many works on Edwards seem to be caused more by a burgeoning fascination with the intricacies of his thought than by heated disagreement over essential issues.19The writings cover so much ground that there are now several works of secondary literature just to keep track of the secondary literature.20 So much has Edwards’ scholarship ballooned, that M.X. Lesser records that there have been eighteen hundred books and articles written about him, and this up to only as recently as 1979.21 Henry F. May inadvertently expressed the atmosphere when he wrote that, “Edwards was somehow a great man, whether we admire him most as an artist, psychologist, preacher, theologian, or philosopher.”22

In researching Edwards’ relation to the Enlightenment the aim is not to multiply the celebration of Edwards as ‘somehow’ great. Nor is it primarily to establish the precise nature of Edwards’ intellectual debt to the Enlightenment, whether it be best formed in relation to Locke, or to Berkeley, or to Malebranche, or to the Cambridge Platonists.23Each of these linkings have, or have had, eminent proponents.24Rather the aim is to explain why he is fascinating, why some think he was a great man. If the nature of Edwards’ response to the Enlightenment can be discovered, then I believe we will find a kernel of insight that will provide the necessary explication. The approach adopted here is to draw from the whole body of Edwards’ writings, published and unpublished, early and late, and relate the emergent picture of Edwards to his Puritan tradition and the intellectual climate of the age. Lengthy coalface manuscript research (itself not as common in Edwards studies as might be expected) is coupled with work on both Puritanism and the Enlightenment to produce new insight. Thereby it is discovered that an organising principle of interpretation lies in the enigma of Edwards’ interaction with the most important cultural and intellectual movement of his time, the Enlightenment.

A Contribution to New Enlightenment Scholarship

Recent developments in our understanding of the Enlightenment help to make such a study possible. Aview of the Enlightenment dominated by the thought of certain outstanding philosophers and intellectuals25 has given way to a more fragmented, pluralist view, hesitant of sweeping generalisations about the so-called ‘Age of Reason.’26The Enlightenment is increasingly seen not as a set of propositions commonly espoused in a set time period, but as a package of discussions or a “series of debates” which, to be sure, were originally resident in the eighteenth century and argued by certain thinkers but which may be characteristic of other times and people.27One can more readily see how Edwards dialogued with such an Enlightenment, than with an Enlightenment that is so defined that it would require drawing connections between Edwards and, say, Rousseau or Montesquieu. Various studies have shown how it may in fact be the peripheries of the Enlightened civilisations, such as the fringes of Europe and America, which were most at the forefront of Enlightenment.28

Far away, then, from the intellectual hot house of Paris, on the other side of the Atlantic, Jonathan Edwards was living in the small frontier town of Northampton.29Small and frontier the town certainly was, but isolated he was not. In our age of rapid telecommunication it is difficult to appreciate the lengths to which an eighteenth century leader would go to be in contact with the wider world. Such familiarity with world affairs was accomplished firstly though the postal service. It is known that Bengel in Wütternberg wrote about one thousand two hundred letters a year, while Francke had about five thousand correspondents, and was in constant contact with three to four hundred of them.30 It is startling to realise that nearly all of the major philosophical figures of the day—Montaigne, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Gassendi, Pascal, Leibniz, Malebranche, Locke, Newton, Bayle and others- “were in some form of contact. One can step into this circle almost anywhere and be led around its entirety.”31Edwards himself was far from unaware of the thinking of these authors. He too was a correspondent, transatlantically with Scottish Christian leaders,32but for his early knowledge of the new science he had other sources of information. It was through these other sources by which information was disseminated around the globe that Edwards’ first caught new ideas from European waters: not through the time-consuming labour of acquiring books for his own library, significant though that was for his store-house of knowledge,33but by way of his reading of learned journals. In this format new ideas were summarised and quickly passed on. “The History of the Works of the Learned,” an English periodical that flourished from 1699–1712, the “Nouvelles de la République des Lettres,” a journal under Pierre Bayle’ s editorship from 1684–1687 and that ran until 1718, and others made it possible to gather information on every kind of learned endeavour. It is difficult to know exactly when Edwards first read such journals; we know that Samuel Johnson had amassed copies of some of them by 1726 and that Cotton Mather was familiar with both “The History of the Works of the Learned” and the “Nouvelles de la République des Lettres.” At any rate, by 1732 Edwards was referring to Journals in his ‘Catalogue.’ So it seems likely that by the age of twenty-five he had come across the ideas of all the afore-mentioned thinkers, with the possible exception of Leibniz.34

The significance of Edwards’ integration with the intellectual cross currents of the Enlightenment is not compromised by the slippery nature of the term itself. ‘The Enlightenment’ is, of course, a historical construct and not a historical actuality, for the age was only formally designated the Enlightenment in the late nineteenth century, where it became “affixed to a cluster of ideas and attitudes, [and] hence to the writers who embraced and expounded them.”35 However, the term does have accurate historical reference to the age. The Enlightenment was indeed a period of time when the words ‘light,’ ‘enlightened’ and ‘enlightenment’ were used to signify the advance of truth and learning in what we have come to think of as enlightened ways.36Asimilar historical deconstruction as that which might be applied to the Enlightenment age may be carried out on any number of periods of history. What, it might be asked, were the Middle Ages to someone who lived in the middle of them? Or the Dark Ages to someone who was unfortunate enough to be darkened by them? Certainly, one must be careful in employing these academic shorthands, avoiding giving the impression that they have a qualitative and not merely descriptive content to their use. Still, unless they are found to be inherently misleading, these terms are a necessary part of discussion, if only for the sake of brevity. As regards the Enlightenment, there are no doubt misleading connotations given to that description of the period, but yet it seems to the present writer that that period may be helpfully grouped under some such label, and that ‘Enlightenment’ does indeed represent the self-consciousness of the intellectual thrust of the period. There are enough factors of commonality and linear development within the period to mean that the age as a whole may be thought of as bearing this, albeit developing, characteristic.

Neither is the significance of Edwards’ integration compromised by the fact that Edwards did not outlive all the contributions to the chronology normally designated by the Enlightenment. Though by Edwards’ death in 1758 the Enlightenment was still waiting for the real sceptical effects of Hume’s thought to be felt and for the systematic expression of its philosophy that Kant produced, Edwards was able to respond to the issue at the heart of the Enlightenment ‘series of debates.’ Edwards was thoroughly acquainted with the Enlightenment, even though he was not versed with everything the Enlightenment thinkers said. For if the Enlightenment discussions had any common ground then it lay in a gravitation to, interpretation of, ability to master or comprehend, those two seventeenth century intellectual giants, Locke and Newton.37It was to their impetus that the English as well as the European Enlightenment owed its existence; they to a large extent set the intellectual agenda for the next hundred years. Edwards imbibed both these seminal thinkers and dynamically interacted with their thought. Of Locke Edwards famously remarked that he read him with far more pleasure, “than the most greedy miser finds in gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly discovered treasure.”38As the influence of Locke and Newton permeates every aspect of the Enlightenment, so it can be felt throughout the work of Edwards.39

There are, therefore, no theoretical reasons why Edwards cannot be related to the most crucial issues of the Enlightenment. Hence, it will come as little surprise to find that in practice as well New England, far though it was from Europe, was during and even before Edwards’ life time inculcating basic Enlightenment principles. Distance itself was not a barrier to the spread of these new ideas; as is argued above, the miles were spanned by the prevalence of learned journals and the correspondence patterns of intellectuals at the time.40 Enlightenment influence is not found so much in the presence of specific figures, of French style philosophes or Thomas Paine look alikes, but in the impregnation of the general culture with some Enlightenment assumptions. The education of the elite had become influenced by the Cambridge Platonists towards rationalism, and the churches by Latitudinarians towards heterodoxy, both of which in New England were preparation for and signs of a capitulation to an ‘enlightened’ type of reliance on reason.41 It is necessary to beware drawing a straightforward time line from Latitudinarianism to heterodoxy42or from Platonism to rationalism, yet it may be that the Enlightenment’ s growth came as much from changing attitudes within as without the church.43Arationalist approach to theology and to the psyche was the thin end of the wedge of the Enlightenment.44Together they made sure that at the start of the eighteenth century New England was merrily imbibing the new light.

Recently it has been argued that Evangelicalism was more of a symptom of the Enlightenment than a reaction against it.45The interpretation is rooted in an understanding of the importance of the doctrine of assurance for the Evangelical movement and the relation of this doctrine to the empirical confidence of the age.46To the extent that this argument is evidence that those involved with religious awakenings on either side of the Atlantic were not all intellectual luddites, and were not all anti-Enlightenment, an understanding of Edwards’ relation to the Enlightenment will support the work. His belief in and practice of revival was determinedly doctrinal not only experiential, reasonable and not only emotional, contemporary not only traditional. To the extent, however, that the argument sees Evangelicalism as created by the Enlightenment,47then the nature of Edwards’ response to the Enlightenment will be seen not to be supportive of such a conclusion. He does not unconsciously mirror the Enlightenment but makes an active, conscious response to it. It is better to picture the Enlightenment as Edwards’ springboard, than as Edwards’ data source. Edwards does make substantial withdrawals from the Enlightenment bank, particularly the proto-Enlightenment of Locke and Newton, but only to invest in his own, essentially Biblical, view of reality.

A Consideration for Current Philosophy and Theology

There is perhaps no more important task facing contemporary philosophy and theology than a right understanding or re-evaluation of the Enlightenment heritage. As such, the nature of Edwards’ response to the Enlightenment may be of no small importance. Studies of the Enlightenment on the historical/philosophical interface have concluded that an appreciation of the Enlightenment is of present value to the philosophical agenda.48 Perhaps the most influential twentieth century theologian formed his restatement of the traditional Christian faith in the context of a critical reassessment of the Enlightenment.49For some the Enlightenment heritage of freedom from ‘superstition’ and exaltation of rational enquiry is to be embraced.50For others the Enlightenment heritage of authoritative claims to universal knowledge and ‘metanarrative’ is less than attractive.51 It may be agreed that something in the Enlightenment poses a challenge to traditional Christianity, whether that challenge be framed as the evidentialist challenge or the challenge of historical criticism of the Bible.52 Apologists of Christianity have responded to this challenge with an acceptance of the cogency and success of the challenge but an assertion of Christianity nonetheless on some sort of ‘existentialist’ grounds;53or with a denial of the success, at least the complete success, of the challenge and the formation of various arguments for Christianity in response;54or even with an acceptance of the success of the challenge and a resulting denial of objective truth to Christianity but a continuing assertion of the value of faith to modern society.55 Recently, there has been an interesting and influential approach, asserting the validity of Christianity on its own grounds and denying the validity of the evidentialist challenge.56

Edwards differs from some modern responses to the Enlightenment in, as will be seen, significant ways. His assertion of Christianity is characteristic in holding to the objective as well as the subjective nature of Christianity. It is doctrinal and experiential, true as well as valuable. There is a balance, a certain poise at this juncture in his writings. While Edwards claims objectivity, it is not an objectivity that is mechanistic and rationalistic; he is careful to argue against the materialism of Hobbes and the rationalism of the Deists. While Edwards preaches for experience it is not an anti-intellectual or fanatical experience; he is careful to distinguish his position from the ‘enthusiasts’ of the Great Awakening period.

If there is a point of commonality with the patterns listed above, it is mainly with the last recorded.57Edwards identifies the issue of epistemology as of prime importance in responding to the Enlightenment. More important for him than historical criticism of the Bible (though he does defend the historicity of the Bible), than evidentialist apologetics (though he does engage in natural theology) is what he took to be at the root of these challenges. His aim in response to the Enlightenment is to form a certain spiritual epistemology. His aim is to know and make known the presence of God.

It is well said that Edwards, “was not a storehouse of Truth but a dynamic force that is not yet spent.”58To our age he offers again his rejoinder to the Enlightenment, that was to hold together rational and spiritual, and so study, write and preach as to convince men and women that the God of the Bible was present. The communication of the presence of God in response to the Enlightenment is the axis around which Edwards’ globe spins. Miss that and we miss everything.

A Contemporary Need

Edwards’ response to the Enlightenment was far from being a solely cerebral affair. His work was directed at a practical contemporary need. For society was not only intellectually imbibing the ‘new light;’ there is also evidence that certain sections of it were partaking of a degree of moral looseness not before seen in the ‘city on a hill.’ There was less concern for Godliness, less concern with pure living; there was in fact a spiritual decline. Harvard is a case in point. There seems to have been a degree of moral looseness as well as doctrinal aberration in this flagship of New England.59While some might dismiss the Harvard activities as the misdemeanours of youth, yet men who could content themselves with such moral laxity were not cut of the same cloth as the Mathers, or Ames or Edwards himself. Perhaps it is no wonder that Whitefield found preachers that he judged were without personal knowledge of Christ.60 Furthermore, even renowned Godly congregations were increasingly finding conversions hard to come by. Stoddard’s ‘harvests,’ his sequences of mini-revivals, were famous, yet at the end of his life it is apparent that much of the fruit had turned to dust.61 Even under Stoddard’s remarkable ministry the new generation were being lost. The need, then, was for an awakening, and Edwards’ burden was the same: his work was to revive the work of God and his endeavours to this end are the practical thrust of his response to the Enlightenment.

Acommon pitfall in Edwards’ scholarship is to squeeze most of him into either the spiritualist or the rationalist box; as Joseph Haroutunian remarked, those critics that have been impressed by Edwards’ spirituality “have done no justice to his intelligence, and those impressed by his intelligence have been impervious to his ‘sense of divine things.’”62Even those who have acknowledged Edwards’ contribution in both realms, have tended to divorce them within his work. Edwards is seen as rational when writing philosophy, spiritual when preaching and praying. Such a split personality Edwards is created who, it is assumed if not stated, would have been quite different if only he had the benefit of ‘modernity.’ He is condescendingly eulogised as one who could have been brilliant but sadly left “monuments so crumbled and overgrown;” what wonders he might have achieved, it is felt, if only he had “not been so tightly bound by theological dogma.”63Edwards himself came across this attitude, writing that “some of these new writers” treat,

“. . . these ancient and eminent divines, as in the highest degree ridiculous, and contrary to common sense . . . [but] . . . have allowed that they were honest well-meaning men . . . [and] . . . have allowed that they did pretty well for the day which they lived in, and considering the great disadvantages they labored under . . . living in the gloomy caves of superstition, [but still they] fondly embraced . . . monstrous opinions, worthy of the greatest contempt of gentlemen possessed of that noble and generous freedom of thought, which happily prevails in this age of light and inquiry.”64

Some find it hard not to look on Edwards in the same way, and extract from him what is palatable for our age and happily ignore what is not: “Exegesis of Edwards has often been its antonym, eisegesis.”65Edwards must not be divided along the lines of our division. He is rational when preaching66 and spiritual when philosophising, yet spiritual in his sermons and rational in his philosophy. He has a ‘holistic’ response to the Enlightenment. And he most usefully interacts with the post-Enlightenment world on his own terms too. His goal is to awaken the work of God by communicating the presence of God; to show God to weary hearts and to weary minds.

This study will examine Edwards’ response to the Enlightenment under four chapter sections: True Salvation, True Experience, True Reality, True Light.

Soaring above the reach of mere mortals, Edwards’ theology and philosophy scales Elysian heights. Or at least in some such vein he has often been viewed.1The greatest American theologian or philosopher, despite his tiresome allegiance to outmoded Calvinism or because of his faithful bond with puritan biblicism, the gloss depending on the ideological location of the scholar. While these trains of thought are open to caricature, I believe that there is a certain spark to Edwards’ work that requires explanation. Such the vigour, such the originality, such the insight of Edwards’ mind that it has caused many to bow in awe. It is the purpose of these final words to draw the threads of the thesis together in a way that offers solution to the enigma of the enduring fascination of Edwards and suggests how this solution is relevant today.

EDWARDS PAST

I have argued that Edwards was intimately concerned with that period of thought that may for shorthand be characterised as the ‘Enlightenment.’2The evidence for this involvement with the contemporary debate is persuasive. He knew the substance of the arguments, was familiar with the characteristic presuppositions of his age, and made recourse to respond to them. The first two propositions of that sentence have long been analysed, but the last has not before been noted. He has been seen either as a proto-modern, someone who imbibed the Enlightenment but could not shrug off his Puritanism,3 or as a traditionalist, someone who imbibed his Puritanism and shrugged off the Enlightenment.4Neither is correct.

It is this response which makes Edwards an important figure. He advanced what is best described as a re-formation of the Enlightenment. There were two aspects to this reformation. First, he remained within the Reformed, Puritan tradition, that was New England’s heritage, and in this sense his response to the Enlightenment was a Reformed response. Secondly, his response to the Enlightenment was reformed in that it was a deliberate re-working of the Enlightenment. He reformed the Enlightenment by re-defining the language and presuppositions of the age and interpreting them on Reformed grounds.

Many examples of the reformation can be found. The language of Lockean empiricism was incorporated in Edwards’ description of spiritual experience. Newtonian physics was interwoven into a defence of theism. Theologically, the Deist agitations were opposed with a coherent structure of the relations between nature and supernature. Philosophically, the sceptical fault line of modernism first exploited by Hume, was given alternative solution in Edwards’ idealistic ‘perceptivism.’ Permeating all, Edwards appealed to the rhetoric of the age by preaching a gospel ‘enlightenment.’

What gave Edwards this dynamic and flexible interaction with the Enlightenment? What allowed his theology not to bend to foreign winds and his philosophical sails to be hoisted to catch the developments of the Enlightenment? The ability to appropriate new concepts came from a combination of Edwards’ initiative and his tradition. In the right hands Puritanism could encourage such an approach. There was precedence in the Puritan attempt to use pagan and non-Christian learning. The literature of scholasticism lay before the Puritan “like an Aztec city before the plunderer,”5for while it had to be used with utmost care, its assimilation was of immense value. There was a theological framework in the Puritan confidence that all truth was God’s truth, underlined by Ramism. This was the ‘philosophy’ that the Puritans were interested in, the whole ‘encyclopedia’ of the revelation of God.6 Edwards’ philosophical thinking was along the same lines as his forebears, bar one factor, the ‘New Science.’ He had a whole new problem of assimilation. No longer was the debate primarily with Aristotle and Plato, Aquinas and Scotus; now the impetus came from Descartes and Newton, Hobbes and Locke. Like the old learning, the new offered wonderful opportunities and dreadful dangers. Edwards was not the only New Englander who seized the opportunities —Cotton Mather was a respected scientist, even a member of the Royal Society.7Edwards, though, was the one who escaped the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, of traditionalism on the hand and capitulation to the Enlightenment on the other.

The scholarly intrigue with Edwards is thus explained. The exacting intricacies of the analysis of Edwards’ sources, the tendency to fit Edwards into moulds with which Edwards himself would plainly have been unhappy, the reactionary concern with Edwards in context, have, of course, different motivations and different degrees of validation, but all alike are symptoms of an inability to explain Edwards’ ‘spark.’ My belief that Edwards is reforming the Enlightenment gives evident reason for his fascination. He stands at the crossroads of modernity; he understands his time; he writes with some empathy and some criticism to form a contrary enlightenment. For us irretrievably ‘modern’ people, who even when attempting not to be modern are forced to define ourselves in its light as ‘postmodern,’ Edwards is a magnet. Like moths we are drawn to his enlightenment.

Other organising principles for Edwards scholarship have come and gone with a rapidity that cause some to argue that Edwards was too diverse for such characterisation.8 It has been suggested that the one characterisation of Edwards’ work as a whole that is able to stand the test of critical acumen is the designation of Edwards as a ‘theo-centrist.’ 9But while it is hard to deny that theocentricity is fundamental to Edwards’ concerns, that seems no more profound than to say that he was an orthodox Christian or a Calvinist. If after hundreds of years of research and countless works on Edwards that is all that can be said, we might as well all go home.

Yet despite redundant arguments interest remains. For this reason: Edwards work is a reforming of the Enlightenment. His quest is our quest: Was ist Aufklärung?

EDWARDS PRESENT

I do not wish to enter into the debate of how to characterise this present time, whether it is appropriate to speak of ‘postmodernism’ or of another variant of modernism, but I take it as apparent that in many fields of endeavour there is a burgeoning reassessment of the heritage of the Enlightenment. If, then, Edwards was reforming the Enlightenment his work is highly relevant to our age. Here Edwards has much to offer: his project centred on epistemology, on knowledge and how it may be attained. It is the problem of epistemology that has dogged the foot steps of Enlightenment style thought, and it is the cogency of traditional epistemology that is rejected in many reassessments of the Enlightenment. Edwards advances an epistemology that is reliable because it is a ‘spiritual’ epistemology, a knowing the presence of God.

• Reliable knowledge starts with revelation. The Enlightenment fascination with reason and nature is reformed by the priority Edwards gives to revelation. Reason is only reasonable if preceded by revelation, true reasoning is reasoning after revelation. Nature is an authority, it is a ‘light,’ but its authority is only correctly appropriated after revelation and is cognitively insufficient without revelation. This revelation is scriptural, the doctrines taught in the Bible, and is illuminative, the process by which the Spirit brings to light the doctrines taught in the Bible. Edwards’ critique of more exalted philosophies of reason and nature rests on an acknowledgement of the inadequacy of reason and nature to come to reliable knowledge. For Edwards, starting with revelation does not inhibit human progress and learning, but is flexible and productive of worthwhile intellectual endeavour.
• Reliable knowledge is monist. The Enlightenment propensity to dualist modes of thought is reformed by Edwards with a more monist approach. Edwards defies the common division of the intellect into separate realms of reason and spirit, of secular and religious, of philosophy and theology. That is not to say that knowledge is undifferentiated but that it is coherent. Reality is invested with a single truth because of the single character of God. In such knowledge there is plurality, it is even described as beautiful, but it is a plurality that is harmonious. Throughout Edwards’ work there is an expectation, a recognition that knowledge is a whole.
• Reliable knowledge is heart knowledge. Enlightenment rationalism, and the contrary tendency to more emotive ‘enthusiasm,’ is reformed by Edwards with heart knowledge. The heart is not feelings or emotion alone, nor thinking or ratiocination alone, nor willing or volition alone. It is rather a sum of all these to form the central disposition of a person. The heart is the feeling, thinking, willing centre of a human being. Reliable knowledge characteristically involves this whole affection, not à la Kierkegaard, at least as Kierkegaard is commonly understood, nor à la Descartes, but a combination of such factors in the heart.10
• Reliable knowledge is God-dependent. The Enlightenment tendency to downgrade the spiritual is reformed by Edwards with a knowledge that is God-dependent. When Edwards speaks of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘mental’ nature of existence it is the dependent existence that he has in his sights, to show that the only substance, strictly speaking, is God. He attempts to integrate the elements of the Enlightenment into a contrary scheme of knowledge where all is reliant on God.

Effects

What would be the effect of this kind of epistemology? It would challenge some of the assumptions of secular society; it would administer an antidote to a spiritually confused church; it would counter relativism.

First, secular society is challenged by the effect that this kind of knowledge scheme would have upon the privatisation of religion.

‘Secularism’ is a more familiar term, but that can be a confusing term with various and changing meanings.11 ‘Privatisation’ is coined here to indicate a precise definition. That is, not to emphasise the exclusion of religious bodies from political power in modern secular states, but the common reduction of religious truth claims to the realm of private opinion in modern secular states. The two may or may not be related, but it is a matter of observation to some that religion, even by its adherents, has in secular society often increasingly become seen as a matter of private opinion.12Though there are exceptions, and these exceptions may be growing, for many religion is a phantom of the psyche rather than a fact of metaphysics.13Whatever the historical genealogy of these changes,14it is hard to deny that the way that religious truth claims are normally heard in secular society is in terms of personal commitment rather than existential description. The claim ‘God exists’ is not often heard to equate to the factual claim that ‘God is an objective reality,’ but to the personal claim that ‘for me God exists.’15

Edwards’ reformation of the Enlightenment is apposite in various ways. Despite having, as is argued in “True Salvation,” a possible inclination towards separation of church and society, Edwards has a very public vision of God. All knowledge is subject to His oversight if it monistically reflects His character. Even ‘secular,’ for the sake of definition, pursuits and thoughts are redundant without a spiritual mindedness, a recognition of God-dependency, a willingness to think God’s thoughts after him by reasoning after revelation.

Secondly, the church is challenged by the spiritual antidote that Edwards’ epistemology would administer. It may be argued that our age has a characteristic spiritual confusion; pluralistic options in spiritualities has not tended to emphasise the differences between experiences but to blur the distinctions. All religious experiences, often, are counted as essentially the same. It may also be argued that our age has a characteristic spiritual need. The growth of new religious groups and the rise of ‘fundamentalism’ may both bear witness to this phenomenon.16

Edwards’ antidote gives a means to experience the spiritual and a means to evaluate that experience. It is heart experience, rational and emotional, that is needed, and which characterises neither of the extremes of Charismatic or nonCharismatic evangelicalism that claim Edwards’ mantle.17 It is a sense of the heart, not imparting information like a sixth sense but as an empirical metaphor imparting appreciation, like a sense of beauty. The evaluation of the experience is flexible in allowing for variation of emotional and psychological personality. It counters spiritual confusion, though, by espousing an unashamedly rigorous pattern of testing. As God is the source of true experience, experience of him will bear certain characteristics. There need be orthodoxy to the doctrine and moral similitude to the ethic of Scripture.

Thirdly, Edwards’ epistemology counters what is called, perhaps by ‘modernists,’ relativism, or which may be termed non-pejoratively as a lack of affinity with absolute or universal truth. Nietzsche may have been one of the first philosophers to feel the dangers of modernistic nihilism and the lack of any ‘God-hypothesis,’ whether one believes that such dangers were his doctrine or his nemesis, but since him more have recognised the totalitarian potential of modernity and its nausea of meaningless. As a result alternative, ‘postmodern’ if you will, non-metaphysical, even non-epistemological, projects to the Enlightenment project have been advanced.

Edwards’ epistemology counters these developments. On the one hand, he also criticised the Enlightenment. Reason was too exalted over emotions and the spiritual. Knowledge was too dualistic to the detriment of coherence. The picture of reality was too mechanical, leaving little room for plurality and beauty. Yet on the other hand, it was a criticism that led to a contrary reassessment to that of the postmodern. His reformed Enlightenment sought to envelop the discoveries of the new science within a framework that encouraged belief in the vital, present activity of the living God. There was plurality, but also universal or absolute truth, not relativism. Edwards epistemology counters relativism with an alternative alternative project to the Enlightenment project. One where the absolute is not a totalitarian metaphysical abstract, but the living God; where plurality does not lead to relativism but to beauty. Discordant relativism dances in concert to divine music.

Defence

How might this knowledge be defended?18Edwards defends his doctrines in various ways with many and complex arguments, some more persuasive than others, some more original than others. It is clear that Edwards thought defence of his beliefs to be important. It is my opinion that Edwards was in general, though not always in detail, successful with his defences. It is the structure within which he fits his plentiful arguments and reasons which is compelling. He gives a compelling framework for cognitive belief, and a compelling example of social reorientation to faith.

First, the framework within which Edwards argues is one which holds to the absolute rationality of Christian doctrine, yet believes that without revelation, without personal experience of God, the rationality will not be grasped. Natural theology, then, has a place in Edwards’ framework. However, Edwards differs from some proponents of this kind of apologetics in that he does not believe that such arguments will convince. Revelation is necessary, scriptural and illuminative, which in Edwards’ hands, the ‘sense’ of God, becomes a powerful apologetic itself for the reality of God.

Against this framework of Edwards, it may be argued he is really engaged in little more than an elaborate sleight of hand. At one moment in his sermons and notes and papers he seems to give all to reason and natural authority, at another he insists that though his arguments are fully convincing a listener will not be convinced unless the truth is revealed to them. One can not escape from such a tight circle. If you believe it is because the truth has been revealed to you, if you do not it is because it has not, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Though well expressed to avoid appearing to be a privatised knowledge, this does still in effect seem to be a kind of sanctified reason, a privileged knowledge of the elect. In effect, one might reply to Edwards’ true light that it fails to meet the necessary criteria of a statement of truth, that it is potentially falsifiable.19If one can not disagree with the truth without showing that one is lacking the necessary ability to perceive the truth, then the ‘truth’ is indeed established, but so what? Surely this ‘truth’ is in danger of becoming little more than the play-thing of a supercilious minority of society, looking down their enlightened noses at all who disagree!

An answer to this kind of criticism might be on these lines. Edwards’ doctrine is, after all, consistent on its own terms, and that such coherence is an adequate criteria of truth in certain cases. There may be something circular about Edwards’ argument, but most arguments are in some degree or other circular; the question is not if it is circular, but whether it is viciously circular, making no contact or appeal with external factors. Edwards’ arguments, in fact, are carefully constructed to make appeals and contact with external factors, arguing at length on the basis of common reason, and so seeming to escape the charge of vicious circularity. Yet having said this, it seems that at some point or other Edwards must inevitably come to the issue of revelation and in the end internal illumination. One might say that it comes down to privatised knowledge in the end. But an Edwardean might legitimately rejoin the fray with a similar exclamation as the above critique—so what? We accept that not all agree on any substantial matter at all. There is no such thing as universal acceptance of one universal truth. We are thus left with a choice. Given that at least some of those who disagree as to the nature of universal truth are sufficiently educated to have considered alternative positions, it seems that we can either conclude that there is no such thing as universal truth, that relativism in some shape or form must rule (if that is not an oxymoron),20or that there is universal truth but some people do not believe in it.21 That is, some people are wrong and will be wrong however much they are educated, persuaded, or cajoled. It seems that if we are to accept the world as it evidently is, then we may either be relativists or believe that some are wrong. If we take the latter view, the question remains why, all other things being equal, some are wrong. Various answers could perhaps be given, but the proposition of God’s revelation seems by no means an unreasonable one. After all, if all other things are equal, education and experience and intelligence for example, then it may be that something outside of normal parameters of human cognition might be required to explain such divergence.

Secondly, Edwards offers a compelling example of social reorientation to faith. I am referring to the Great Awakening and to Edwards’ theory and practice of revival. I list this as a prime and compelling defence of Edwards because it would be here that Edwards would point. God, for him, supernaturally broke into history to awaken people to his reality. Is this an irrelevance to secular society? Initially it may appear so, but it is not as open and shut a case as it seems. Eighteenth century New England, it is true, was a society where most at least publicly claimed allegiance to the historical events of Christianity.22Atheology of revival has rather different resonances in a society where most make no such claim, where perhaps the Christian preacher need not so much revive the nominal as convert the ‘pagan.’ Yet, while for Edwards an ‘awakening’ was theologically distinguishable from regeneration, awakenings were the best opportunity for regeneration and therefore he looked for conversions from revival.23Furthermore, though these conversions were normally from nominalism and not paganism, it is instructive that the same ‘awakening’ language was used to describe Native American conversions as white Anglo-Saxon Protestant conversions.24

In fact, it may be argued that revival is the epistemological key to the heart of secular society as much as nominal Christian society. For such a dependence upon God for supernatural salvation in the present may help to encourage the belief that the gospel has reference outside the individual subject, and thus work for gospel objectivity. Revival does not bring things into the objective realm in the way that a mathematical proof does; but it counters privatisation as Mount Carmel countered the worshippers of Baal. Revival fire from heaven demonstrates the objectivity of religion in the sense that it brings religion from the private to the public realm.

FINAL WORD

It is not unusual to talk of Edwards in near messianic terms. To speak in hushed voice of his contribution to philosophy, to theology, to the church. Edwards, no doubt, had his failings, and his system of thought had its failings too. Yet, I do not feel that such language is wholly inappropriate. For concerning one thing at least his message is well worth hearing: the reformation of the Enlightenment. True enlightenment, for Edwards, could only begin with knowing the presence of God.

Introduction footnotes:

1. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason, (New York, 1968), 342.

2. I am referring to Existentialism and Postmodernism. There was, of course, earlier dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment in the Romanticism of the Nineteenth century.

3. Don Cupitt, The Time Being, (London, 1992).

4. Kant’s famous answer to this question appeared in the Berlin newspaper Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1783, and is reprinted in, Jean Mondot, ed., Immanuel Kant, Qu’est-ce que les Lumières? (Paris, 1991),71–86. Foucault believes the Enlightenment question itself is unwise: “What is modern Philosophy? . . . modern Philosophy is the Philosophy attempting to answer the question raised so imprudently two centuries ago: was ist Aufklärung?” (Michel Foucault, “Was Ist Aufklärung?” The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, [London, 1984], 32. My italics).

5. Lamin Sanneh, Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process, (London, 1993).

6. Pierre Chaunu, La Civilisation de L’Europe des Lumieres, (Paris, 1971), 288.

7. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. and ed. Cohler, Miller, Stone, (Cambridge, 1989), 3.

8. A. Cobban, “The Enlightenment,” The New Cambridge Modern History, vol.7, (Cambridge, 1957), 91–92.

9. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk.2, ch.1, (London, 1706), 51.

10. C.A.Helvetius, “De L’Esprit,” discours 1, ch.1, Oeuvres Completes, vol.1, (1795), 135.

11 Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, (Cambridge, 1995), 63–79; A. Pagden describes the Enlightenment relationship with ‘the other’partly as a search for empirical data for social science study, (A. Pagden, European Encounters in the New World, [London, 1993]); Pierre Chaunu argues that Enlightenment certitude is based in preEnlightenment belief in divine order, yet it was just this belief that was to be challenged, (Pierre Chaunu, La Civilisation de L’Europe des Lumières, [Paris, 1972], 289–291).

12. Don Cupitt, The Sea of Faith, (London, 1984), 19.

13. John Opie, ed., Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment, (Lexington, Mass., 1969). Stephen J. Stein, “Jonathan Edwards,” Encyclopedia of Religion, vol.5, (New York, 1987), 34.

14. See, for the philosophy angle the seminal work by Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards, (New York, 1949), the works of Wallace E. Anderson (particularly his introduction to Yale Works, vi), and Stephen H. Daniel, The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards, (Bloomington, 1994); for theology, Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards:A Reappraisal, (New York, 1966) and Harry S. Stout, “The Puritans and Edwards,” in, Jonathan Edwards and The American Experience, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch, (Boston, 1981); for Edwards as a preacher, Wilson H. Kimnach’s introduction to Yale Works, x and xiv; for Edwards as a pastor see P.J. Tracy, Jonathan Edwards, Pastor, (New York, 1980); and as a social theorist see Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind, (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), Gerald R. Mcdermott, One Holy and Happy Society, (Pennsylvania, 1992). Many of these, of course, contain emphases of all four categories, and others beside; for other interdisciplinary minglings see, Critical Essays on Jonathan Edwards, ed. William J. Scheick, (Boston, 1980) and, Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch, (Boston, 1981).

15. For the Hell-fire type see Leslie Stephens, “Jonathan Edwards,” Hours in an Old Library, (London, 1876), 85–90 (reprinted, Critical Essays on Jonathan Edwards, ed. William J. Scheick, [Boston, Mass., 1980), or Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Jonathan Edwards,” from, “Pages from an Old Volume of Life”, Complete Works, vol.8, (Boston, 1889), or V.L. Parrington, “The Colonial Mind, 1620–1800,” Main Currents in American Thought, vol.1, (New York, 1927), 148–152, 159–162; and as an artist see Edwin H. Cady, “The Artistry of Jonathan Edwards,” New England Quarterly, (22 March 1949), 61–72, (reprinted, Critical Essays on Jonathan Edwards, ed. William J Scheick, [Boston, 1980]).

16. Perry Miller never went so far as to claim Edwards as specifically a ‘Lockean Philosopher’and there is danger in creating a caricature of Miller (see Francis T. Butts, “The Myth of Perry Miller,” American Historical Review, vol.87, no.3, (June 1982), 665–694), though he is normally imputed with having started the modern analysis of Edwards in relation to Locke. Some of his followers became more explicit, however. Morton White, for instance, calls Edwards a ‘Lockean Philosopher’in his, Science and Sentiment in America: From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey, (New York, 1972), 35, while John E. Smith gives a more sophisticated rendition of the Miller score with, Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher, (London, 1992), and for a new angle on Edwards the philosopher see Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards:The Idea of Habit and Edwards’Dynamic Vision of Reality, (Princeton, 1988); for a general view of Edwards as more traditional see, Alfred Owen Aldridge, Jonathan Edwards, (New York, 1966), and, Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch, (Boston, 1981) for a compilation with a desire to relocate Edwards in history. V.L. Parrington sees Edwards as an anachronism in his, Main Currents of American Thought, (3 vols., New York, 1927, 1930). For Edwards as specifically medieval, see Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America, (Berkeley, 1966), and Vincent Tomas, “The Modernity of Jonathan Edwards,” New England Quarterly, 25, (1952), 60–84.

17. For Edwards as a family man see George Perry Morris, “The Human Side of Edwards,” Congregationalist and Christian World, vol. 88, (3 Oct. 1903), 454; the picture of Edwards as a withdrawn intellectual is still best drawn by Perry Miller: “The real life of Jonathan Edwards was the life of his mind,” (Jonathan Edwards, [New York, 1949], xi).

18. W.S. Morris’view in his fine 1955 Ph.D., The Young Jonathan Edwards, (published, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1991), that debate around Edwards can be schematised as attempts to solve the “cluster of problems” about the relation of theology and philosophy in Edwards’thought, with the solutions themselves reducible to analysis under five overlapping chronological periods of criticism, while still helpful, has been overwritten by the more recent burgeoning of scholarly interest around Edwards. For a summary of the debate see Donald Webber, “The Figure of Jonathan Edwards,” American Quarterly, 35, (1983), and Daniel B. Shea “Jonathan Edwards: The First Two Hundred Years,” Journal of American Studies, 14, (1980), 181–197.

19. So the scholarly but disparate anthology, Jonathan Edwards’s Writings, ed. Stephen J. Stein, (Bloomington, 1996).

20. See the reference works of Clarence H. Faust and H. Thomas, Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections, (revised edition, New York, 1962); M.X. Lesser, Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide, (Boston Mass., 1981); Nancy Manspeaker, Jonathan Edwards: Bibliographical Synopses, (New York, 1981); and specifically for Ph.Ds. see Richard S. Sliwoski, “PhD’s on Jonathan Edwards,” Early American Literature, vol.14, (1979–80).

21. M.X. Lesser, Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide, (Boston, Mass. 1981).

22. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch, ed., Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, (Boston, 1981), 3. My italics.

23. The importance of understanding Edwards’intellectual inheritance is of course not denied. Helpful studies here are: William Sparks Morris The Young Jonathan Edwards, (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1991); Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’ Moral Thought and its British Context, (Williamsburg, Va., 1981); Richard Warch, School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–1740, (New Haven Conn., 1973); Samuel Elliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge, Mass. 1936); Perry Miller, The New England Mind, (Harvard, 1954). For primary literature Edwards’ ‘catalogue’repays study (reprinted, Thomas H Johnson, “Jonathan Edwards’background of reading,” Colonial society of Massachusetts Publications, xxviii, [1931], 193–222).

24. For the link to Locke see Perry Miller Jonathan Edwards, (New York, 1949); for Berkeley (and Malebranche) see David Levin, “Edwards, Franklin and Cotton Mather: AMeditation on Character and Reputation,” in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch, (Boston, 1981); for Malebranche see Norman S. Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’ Thought and its British Context, (Williamsburg, Va., 1981); and for the Cambridge Platonists see Daniel Walker Howe, “The Cambridge Platonists of Old England and the Cambridge Platonists of New England,” Church History, vol.57, (1988), 470–486, and Emily Stipes Watts, Jonathan Edwards and the Cambridge Platonists, (Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1963).

25. Older interpretations are found in Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, (Princeton, 1951); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment, 2 vols., (New York, 1966, 1969). Gay recognised a broader Enlightenment but chose to concentrate on the great thinkers.

26. Barth’s warning against seeing the Enlightenment in too cyclops fashion as exclusively rational needs to be heeded; there was mystery as well as rationality in the Age of Reason, (Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century:Its Background and History, [London, 1972], 36, 37).

27. Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); Alfred Owen Aldridge, The Ibero-American Enlightenment, (Illinois, 1971); Franco Venturini, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment, (Cambridge, 1971), 2; Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America, (New York, 1976); Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment, (London, 1981); Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, (Cambridge, 1995), 3.

28. Bernard Plongeron, “Recherches sur L’Aufklärung Catholique en Europe Occidentale,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, vol.16, (1969), 555–605; Franco Venturini, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment, (Cambridge, 1971), 133; Alfred Owen Aldridge, The Ibero-American Enlightenment, (Illinois, 1971); Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America, (New York, 1976). Boorstin denied the existence of an American Enlightenment on the grounds of a disinclination to a homogeneous Enlightenment, (Daniel J. Boorstin, “The Myth of An American Enlightenment,” America and the Image of Europe, [New York, 1960], 65–78). On the broader issue of homogeneity he has been heard, on the specific matter of the American Enlightenment more recent research has overtaken him.

29. Sereno E. Dwight, “Life of President Edwards,” (New York, 1829), “Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards,” Banner Works, i, xxxvii.

30. W.R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening, (Cambridge, 1992), 2.

31. Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and its British Context, (Williamsburg, Va., 1981), 15.

32. See for example the “letter from Mr. Gillespie. Carnock, Nov. 14, 1746” and Edwards’reply of Sept. 4, 1747; also Edwards letters “To the Rev. Mr. M’Culock, of Cambuslang” Jan. 21, 1747 and Edwards’reply to a letter from the same on Sept. 23, 1747, (Sereno E. Dwight, “The Life of President Edwards,” [New York, 1829], “Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards,” Banner Works, i, lxxxiii–xcii).

33. Edwards comments on the new possibilities of book learning, “Those who have not an education in these days may get much by books, which are so common . . .” (no.140, “The ‘Miscellanies,’a-500,” Yale Works, xiii, 297). See also, David Hall, “The Uses of Literacy in New England, 1600–1850,” Printing and Society in Early America, ed., William L. Joyce, 1–47; G.T. Tanselle, “Some Statistics on American Printing, 1764–1783,” The Press and the American Revolution, ed. B. Bailyn, (Boston, 1981), 315–364.

34. Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and its British Context, (Williamsburg, Va., 1981), 16–18.

35. John W. Yolton, ed.,The Blackwell Companion to the Enlightenment, (Oxford, 1995), 1.

36. Varying terminology for the Enlightenment in different countries is not a barrier, (Im Hof, The Enlightenment, [Oxford, 1994], 3–4).

37. Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, (Cambridge, 1995), 40, 56, 120–121.

38. Samuel Hopkins, The Life of Jonathan Edwards, (Boston, 1765); reprinted, Jonathan Edwards, ed. David Levin, (New York, 1969). The evidence of Edwards’familiarity with Locke in his student years pre-1722 may not be as conclusive as Hopkins suggested, and Miller and others assumed, but Edwards was still clearly influenced by Locke, (Wallace E. Anderson, “Editor’s Introduction,” Yale Works, vi, 17–26).

39. When it is said that Edwards was involved with science and philosophy a right understanding of what this implies needs to be carefully nuanced with an appreciation of the ways these words were used in the eighteenth century. ‘Science’was not the discipline of professional empirical analysis that a modern would expect but was used to indicate knowledge; ‘natural philosophy’was the term which most closely approximated to our understanding of science, (Sydney Ross, “Scientist: The Story of a Word,” Annals of Science, vol.18, (1962), 65–86; Geoffrey Cantor, “The Eighteenth Century Problem,” History of Science, vol.20, [1982], 44–63; Simon Schaffer, “Natural Philosophy,” The Ferment of Knowledge, ed., G.S.Rousseau and Roy Porter, [Cambridge, 1980]). Edwards did engage in ‘philosophical’thought, both of the natural and more metaphysical sort, but he can only strictly be said to be a philosophical thinker in the Puritan sense of the word. It was never his aim to construct a system of thinking to supplant plain Biblical understanding, but rather to search into the lengths and breadths of human knowledge, into ‘philosophy,’confident that therein would be found a description of the activities of God, already asserted in the Bible. Such was the normal certainty of Puritan thought; as Chauncy argued against Dell in 1655, the perfect doctrine contained in Scripture “comprehends the doctrine of God’s works, which is called philosophy,” (Perry Miller, New England Mind, [Harvard, 1954], 85). So also would Edwards’‘Ramist’training have suggested to him. Ramus, the founder of a new system of academic curriculum which was reworked by Richardson and Ames into ‘technologia’(the “official philosophy of the New England Puritans”), had re-emphasised the Aristotelian definition of art as the practical outworking of science. In this strict sense, though Puritans also referred to art as the sum of knowledge, nature was ‘science’for us, it was something to be known, but for God, it was ‘art,’ something that He did, (Flower and Murphy, A History of Philosophy in America, [New York, 1977], 21): “All the arts are nothing else but the beams and rays of the wisdom of the first Being in the Creatures, shining and reflecting hence, upon the glass of man’s understanding,” (Perry Miller, The New England Mind, [Harvard, 1954], 180). This was not only true for natural philosophy, but also for the philosophy of the Scholastics and of the pagans, of those eminent Greek philosophers. The Puritan belief in ‘common grace’allowed an inherent flexibility to their approach to teaching on secondary matters from pagans and non-Christian sources, knowing that the ultimate source of all good is God alone. For within the Puritan framework God is by definition the gold standard of both morality and the gospel. This was the ‘philosophy’that the Puritans were interested in, the whole ‘encyclopedia’of the revelation of God, (Flower and Murphy, A History of Philosophy in America, [New York, 1977], 20; Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy At Seventeenth Century Harvard, [Carolina, 1981]; Perry Miller, The New England Mind, [Harvard, 1954], 90, 98).

40. England and America also had particularly close communication, (W.R. Ward The Protestant Evangelical Awakening, [Cambridge, 1992], 33.)

41. See Norman S. Fiering, “The First American Enlightenment: Tillotson, Leverett, and Philosophical Anglicanism,” New England Quarterly, vol. 54, (Sept. 1981), 307–344; “Will and Intellect in the New England Mind,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, xxix, (1972), 515–558; Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth Century Harvard: a Discipline in Transition, (Chapel Hill, 1981); S. E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 554; R.W. Warch, School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–1740, (New Haven, Conn., 1973),18); David Walker Howe, “The Cambridge Platonists of Old England and the Cambridge Platonists of New England,” Church History, 57, (1988), 407–486; John Tillotson, Works, vol. 2, (London, 1752), 302.

42. There has been something of a reaction against what some have felt is an overtly ‘whiggish’reading of Latitudinarianism. For a time Leslie Stephen and Gerald R. Cragg dominated the interpretative structure, framing Latitudinarians as a staging post on the way to full blown Deism, Arianism, and Atheism, (Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, [London, 1876]; G.R.Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason, [Cambridge, 1950]). This hermeneutic was first seriously questioned in H. R. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, (London, 1965), and more recently in W.M. Spellman, The Latitudinarians and The Church of England, 1660–1700, (Athens, Ga., 1993). However, there have been other recent works that, while affirming the theological orthodoxy of the Latitudinarians, see this orthodoxy as invested with an inherent heterodox bacteria that was the germ of later ‘free thinking’heterodoxy, (Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1600–1780. Volume 1:Whichcote to Wesley, [New York, 1992]; Martin I. J. Griffin, Jr., “Latitudinarianism in the Seventeenth-Century Church of England,” Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, ed. Lila Freeman, vol.32, [Leiden, 1992]). What seems undeniable in McAdoo and Spellman’s revisionist critique, is the underlying assertion of the methodological principle of, what might be called, ‘non sequitur.’In other words we can not neatly equate a time line with a line of causation; if something is followed by something else it does not, of course, mean that it caused that something else. But one wonders whether Cragg and Stephen really made such an obvious error. Rather the debate seems more fuelled by whether the Latitudinarians are to be valued in themselves, or denigrated to the position of causes of which Deism is the effect. It may be asserted that they are to be valued on their own terms, but yet that their particular handling of reason laid themselves and their followers open to heterodoxy.

43. “Put briefly, unbelief was not something that ‘happened to’religion. On the contrary, religion caused unbelief,” (James Turner, Without God, Without Creed:The Origins of Unbelief in America, [Baltimore, 1985], xiii).

44. For Barth it was not biblical criticism but doctrines concerning the will that marked the start of the Enlightenment, (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol.4.1, (Edinburgh, 1956), 479).

45. D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History From the 1730s to the 1980s, (London, 1989), 43, 57.

46. Acontrary view of assurance is found in, Joel R. Beeke, Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation, (New York, 1991).

47. “The Evangelical version of Protestantism was created by the Enlightenment,” (D. W. Bebbington Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History From the 1730s to the 1980s, [London, 1989], 71).

48. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, (New York, 1971); Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” The Foucault Reader, ed., Paul Rabinow, (New York, 1984), 32–50.

49. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4, (Edinburgh, 1956–1958); Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, (London, 1972).

50. Isaiah Berlin, The Age of Enlightenment, (Oxford, 1979), 29.

51. Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, (Manchester, 1984); Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Oxford, 1980). Postmodernism is difficult to define almost by definition, (Daniel W. Hardy, God’s Way With the World, [Edinburgh, 1996], 259), and is an “immense challenge” to the church, (Richard H. Roberts, “APostmodern Church?” Essentials of Christian Community, ed. David F. Ford, [Edinburgh, 1996], 195).

52. Brian Hebblethwaite, The Christian Hope, (Basingstoke, 1984), 93–108.

53. Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol.2, (London, 1955), 250.

54. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vols. 1–2, (London, 1951–57).

55. Don Cupitt, The Sea of Faith, (London, 1984); Don Cupitt, The Time Being, (London, 1992). Cupitt is countered in, Brian Hebblethwaite, A Defence of Objective Theism, (Cambridge, 1988); Ethics and Religion in a Pluralistic Age, (Edinburgh), 117–136.

56. Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Nous, xv, (1981). Since this initial article many works have followed.

57. See Chapter “True Experience” for further discussion.

58. Editorial comment, Congregationalist and Christian World, vol.88, (3 Oct. 1903), 454.

59. S. E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 456–463. Harvard set the tone for New England, (Perry Miller, The New England Mind, [Harvard, 1954], 75–76). For doctrine see footnote 41.

60. Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening, (Edinburgh, 1989), 95.

61. Yale Works, iv, 146; Sereno E. Dwight, “Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards,” Banner Works, i, xxxvii-xxxviii.

62. Alfred Owen Aldridge, Jonathan Edwards, (New York, 1966), 150.

63. Thomas H. Johnson, “Jonathan Edwards’Background of Reading,” The Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxviii, (1931), 193–222.

64. Yale Works, i, 437.

65. Daniel B. Shea, “Jonathan Edwards: the First Two Hundred Years,” Journal of American Studies, vol.14, (1980), 181–197.

66. The ‘proof’ section of the traditional triadic Puritan sermon gave Edwards plenty of scope to reason, (Horton Davies, The Worship of the American Puritans, 1629–1730, [New York, 1990], 82).

Conclusion footnotes:

1. Eulogy is the mark that mars these studies of Edwards. Works in praise of Edwards are not the sole possession of any particular school of scholarship and are far from rare. From Miller to Jensen, analysis of Edwards has attracted something of a messianic tone. Miller is infamous in the nether world of Edwards’scholarship for arguing for the ‘modernity’of Jonathan Edwards, though to be fair he did recognise that Edwards “speaks from a primitive religious conception” before saying that he was “so much ahead of his time that our own can hardly be said to have caught up with him,” (Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards, [New York, 1949], xiii); Jensen’s work exhibits scholarly restraint as well as affectionate enthusiasm, but he does not manage to avoid ending on a note of eulogy, (Robert W. Jensen, America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards, [New York, 1988], 195).

2. For discussion of the concept of the Enlightenment see the “Introduction.”

3. Thomas H. Johnson, “Jonathan Edwards’Background of Reading,” The Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol.xxviii, (1931), 193–222. Bebbington identifies the doctrine of assurance as the distinctive factor of the evangelical awakening, and believes that this greater soteriological confidence stems from the psychological confidence of Locke. It is in this sense that for Bebbington there is a, “palpably Enlightenment tone about Edwards’form of expression” as, “Edwards derived his confidence about salvation from the atmosphere of the English Enlightenment,” (D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, [London, 1989], 48). Miller is the progenitor of a modernist interpretation of Edwards, (Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards, [New York, 1949]).

4. Parrington saw Edwards as anachronistic, (V.L.Parrington, Main currents of American thought, [3 vols., New York, 1927, 1930]), Gay and Thomas argued that Edwards was medieval, (Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America, [Berkeley, 1966]; Vincent Tomas, “The Modernity of Jonathan Edwards,” New England Quarterly, 25, [1952], 60–84). Aldridge argued for a traditional Edwards, (Alfred Owen Aldridge, Jonathan Edwards, [New York, 1966]), and more recently there has been a move towards locating Edwards in his historical context, (Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch, eds., Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, [Boston, 1981]).

5. Perry Miller, The New England Mind, (New York, 1954), 90.

6. Flower and Murphy, A History of Philosophy in America, (New York, 1977), 20, 21.

7. Ibid., 74–76.

8. Michael J. McClymond, “God the Measure: Towards an Understanding of Jonathan Edwards’Theocentric Metaphysics,” Scottish journal of Theology, vol.47, no.1, (Winter 1994), 44.

9. McClymond understands the difficulty of summarising Edwards, but offers ‘theo-centricity’as the appropriate model, (Ibid., 45); Cooey also sees the problem of characterising Edwards, but like McClymond resorts to ‘theocentricity,’(Paula M. Cooey, Jonathan Edwards on Nature and Destiny, [Lewiston, 1985], 11&12); Lee holds to the importance of the priority of ‘theo-activity’for Edwards, (Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, [Princeton, 1988], 14).

10. Wainwright feels that Edwards’ ‘heart’experience requires controls to be reliable, but these seem already present in Edwards’‘signs of experience,’(William J. Wainwright, Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason, [Ithaca, 1995]). Kenny argues for an epistemology that incorporates emotions, (Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will, [Bristol, 1994]).

11. There has been an evident development in the employment of secularization theory, moving from a view of secular society as leading towards extinction of traditional religion, to one of secular society as creating privatised religions. For discussion of secularization see, Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, (Cambridge, 1975), D. Martin, A General Theory of Secularization, (Oxford, 1978), and Philip E. Hammond, ed., The Sacred in a Secular Age, (Los Angeles, 1985).

12. So Wilson argues that even if secular society does have religion, it will be of a privatised kind: “The inherited model of secularization does not predict the eventual total eclipse of all religion, however. In this private sphere, religion often continues, and even acquires new forms of expression, many of them much less related to other aspects of culture than were the religions of the past,” (Bryan Wilson “Secularization: The Inherited Model,” The Sacred in a Secular Age, ed., Philip E. Hammond, [Los Angeles, 1985], 20).

13. The exceptions are found in the phenomena of the numerical stability and perhaps growth of the conservative churches, and in the increasing involvement of religion in the public sphere. Casanova and Johnson discuss the latter, (José Casonova, Public Religions in the Modern World, [Chicago, 1994]; Benton Johnson, “Religion and Politics in America: The Last Twenty Years,” The Sacred in a Secular Age, ed. Philip E. Hammond, [Los Angeles, 1985], 301–316) and since Kelly’s work (Dean Kelly, Why the Conservative Churches Are Growing? [New York, 1977]), the former has been the subject of sociological analysis, (Philip E. Hammond, ed., The Sacred in a Secular Age, [Los Angeles, 1985]; Steve Bruce, “The Persistence of Religion: Conservative Protestantism in the United Kingdom,” The Sociological Review, vol.31, [1983], 453–470).

14. Various patterns of historical cause and effect might be traced. Ahistory of the effects of great philosophers might be described (tracing a pattern from Locke to Hume to Kant to Hegel to Nietzsche to the various proponents of existentialism and modernism and post-modernism), so might some history of the effects of economic development (tracing a Marxist pattern of religion as the opium of the people, increasing religious disillusionment may be identified with increasing wealth), a history of the results of natural science (the patent success of the empirical method of modern science traces a pattern that questions the relevance of supernatural factors), and also a history of the effects of the political distinction between church and state in modern liberal democracies (tracing a pattern of the association of religion with the private realm in the polis encouraging religion to be without public reference but only personal allegiance). See José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, (Chicago, 1994), P. Hammond ed., The Sacred in a Secular Age, (Los Angeles, 1985), D. Lyon, “Secularization: The Fate of Faith in Modern Society?” Them, vol.10, no.1, (1984), 14–22.

15. Profound reflections on the problem of squaring the God of the monotheistic traditions with the legacy of a secularism that guarantees pluralism of belief and freedom of conscience are found in, New Perspectives Quarterly, (Spring 1994).

16. José Casonova, Public Religions in the Modern World, (Chicago, 1994); Steve Bruce, “The Persistence of Religion: Conservative Protestantism in the United Kingdom,” The Sociological Review, vol. 31, (1983), 453–470.

17. The terms ‘non-charismatic evangelicalism’and ‘charismatic evangelicalism’are used to loosely identify what may be taken to be the two opposing poles in contemporary western evangelicalism. A‘charismatic’is defined as someone who believes that the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit evident in the New Testament are operative today, a ‘non-charismatic’as someone who believes that they are not. The word originates from the Greek ‘charisma,’which means something like ‘grace-gift.’Evangelicalism is defined with Bebbington as being crucicentric, biblicist, conversionist, and activist (D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, [London, 1989], 3), and therefore as potentially including both charismatics and non-charismatics. The word ‘evangelicalism’originates from the Greek ‘evangel’which means ‘gospel’or ‘good news,’deriving from the German use of the term to define reformed religion.

Edwards is clearly anti-‘charisma’but not because of his epistemology. For him, all ‘extraordinary’gifts have a high revelatory function, were intended to reveal the mind of God, and so ceased with the closing of the canon. Edwards’logic is that as “all the extraordinary Gifts & Influences of the Spirit implied immediate Revelation,” meaning, “God’s making known Some truth by immediate Suggestion of it to the mind without its being made known by Sense—Reason or by any former Revelation;” as this high kind of revelation is the same throughout Scripture, “So it was with all the extraordinary influences of the Spirit that were given of before there was any written word. . . . So it was with all the extraordinary Influences & Gifts of the Spirit we read of in the N.T.;” therefore, “we may learn That if it is not to be expected That any of these Gifts that imply divine Revelation should be loosened in These days,” as, “The Words of the H[oly] SS[Scriptures] in the Conclusion of our Bibles do manifestly hold forth this much to us that now the canon of Scriptures is finished,” (1 Corinthians 13:8–13, May 1748, “The extraordinary influences of the Spirit of God imparting immediate revelations to men designed only for a temporary continuance and never were intended to be steadily upheld in the Christian church,” MSS, Beinecke). To Edwards, “they that leave the sure word of prophecy, that God has given us to be a light shining in a dark place, to follow such impressions and impulses, leave the guidance of the pole star, to follow a Jack-with-a-lanthorn,” (“The Distinguishing Marks,” Yale Works, iv, 282; Yale Works, viii, 351–365).

Nevertheless, Edwards has been widely used as a guide in recent unusual Charismatic manifestations, particularly those dubbed the ‘Toronto Blessing.’ By and large these popular interpretations fail to garner full benefit from Edwards because his more mature work on religious experience, “The Religious Affections,” is ignored in favour of analysis of his more accessible and earlier works on revival in general, especially “The Distinguishing Marks.” This is the reason for the misdirection of the otherwise thorough chapter on Edwards in Guy Chevreau’s, “Catch the Fire,” (London, 1994), 70–145. One can not purport to give a true picture of Edwards’doctrine of religious experience if no attempt is made to interact with “The Religious Affections.” The same story can be told for the one reference to Edwards in the recent analysis of revival in Prophecy Today. The article is entitled “Why Revivals Don’t Last,” and the reference is found in Edwards’ early, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” (Prophecy Today, vol. 9, no. 6, November/December 1993). The Evangelical Times falls into this trap in the article by John Legg, “Jonathan Edwards On Revival,” (Evangelical Times, September 1994), which, though giving a careful application of Edwards’refusal to draw conclusion from the presence or absence of physical manifestations, fails to use Edwardean doctrines drawn from outside of “The Distinguishing Marks.” While Christianity Today has at least published a review which carefully considers “The Religious Affections” it does not analyse this as a maturation of Edwards’ thinking, (Richard T. Lovelace, “The Surprising Works of God: Jonathan Edwards on Revival, Then and Now,” Christianity Today, [September 11, 1995], 28–32). Those which made least play of the Edwards-Toronto Blessing link were the publications of the Anglicans and the Methodists. The Church of England Newspaper published a compilation article, incorporating three different opinions, none of which referred to Edwards specifically, though one made some analysis of the Great Awakening in general, (“Testing Toronto,” The Church of England Newspaper, July 8 1994). The Methodist Recorder similarly published an assessment with no link to Edwards, (“Testing the Spirit,” The Methodist Recorder, November 10 1994). The paper that made the most of attempted insightful analysis of the ‘Toronto Blessing’and also the link to Edwards was Evangelicals Now, with no less than five major articles on the movement between October 1994 and June 1995, one entirely on Edwards and another making significant reference to him. The article that was entirely on Edwards, though otherwise balanced, unfortunately also failed to take any account of “The Religious Affections,” (Gary Benfold, “Jonathan Edwards and Toronto,” Evangelicals Now, October 1994); the article that referred to Edwards is, to my knowledge, the sole popular article that at least noted the importance of the development within Edwards’ thought, culminating in “The Religious Affections,” (Roy Clements, “Don’t Tread on My Toron—toes,” Evangelicals Now, June 1995). The lesson to be learned from this survey is that in the future if the Church is to make effective use of Edwards they must learn the importance of Edwards’ ‘sense of the heart,’of his ‘affections;’ if this is ignored Edwards becomes little more than a sop for any kind of religiosity.

18. Assertion is insufficient, Edwards’doctrines need be defended as true. For, as Hebblethwaite argues, truth is central to any approach to religion, (Brian Hebblethwaite, “Religious Truth and Dialogue,” The Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, [Spring, 1984], 3–17).

19. Popper famously argued that this was a necessary criterion for a scientific theory, (Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, [New York, 1959]), 40–41.

20. Relativism is not further considered here for the sake of clarity and brevity. Otherwise, given that we are attempting to construct a basis for knowledge of universal truth it would seem appropriate at this place to consider the premise that such an attempt is unwarranted. The classic answer to total relativism is, of course, similar to that given in the following footnote to the assertion that there is universal truth but no one knows it. That is, that ‘universal relativism’is an oxymoron: one can not seriously argue that there are absolutely no universals for that itself is a universal.

21. Athird alternative might be to argue that there is universal truth and no one knows it, but if this is so there seems that there is nothing anyone can do about it, and, more to the point, that the proposition can not be formally true on its own terms. The proposition itself seems to be a universal truth and yet by its own definition I cannot know that it is so, therefore it is not true, therefore it is unassertable.

22. The Deist and Arminian backdrop to the Great Awakening is not the contemporary one. Penelhum avoids the anachronistic pitfall by attempting to relate Butler’s apologetic stance to the deists to more modern concerns not by drawing a comparison between deism and later movements, but by suggesting how Butler’s response to deism might operate in a different situation, (Terence Penelhum, Butler, [London, 1985], 106). Cragg argues that Deism is the root cause of many modern philosophical assumptions: “Its [Deism’s] philosophic authority may have been shaken by Butler and Hume, but it still shapes the unexamined presuppositions which govern men’s outlook, and those who make no allowance for its conclusions are at a loss to understand the modern mind,” (G.R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason, [Cambridge, 1950], 92).

23. The full title of Edwards’“Faithful Narrative” reveals his attitude, “AFaithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton and the Neighbouring Towns and Villages of New Hampshire, in New England in a Letter to the Revd. Dr. Benjamin Colman of Boston,” (Yale Works, iv, 128). It was the surprising work of God to produce so many conversions. See the chapter “True Salvation.”

24. Edwards describes Brainerd as being the “instrument of a most remarkable awakening, and an exceeding wonderful and abiding alteration and moral transformation of such subjects who peculiarly render the charge rare and astonishing,” (Yale Works, vii, 90). Brainerd writes in his diary on Friday June 28th 1745: “My soul rejoiced to find that God enabled me to be faithful, and that he was pleased to awaken these poor Indians by my means. O, how heart-reviving and soul-refreshing is it to me to see the fruit of my labours!” (“Brainerd’s Life and Diary,” Yale Works, vii, 301). And later he describes how it was that, “the truths of God’s word seemed, at times, to be attended with some power upon the hearts and consciences of the Indians. And especially this appeared evident in a few instances, who were awakened to some sense of their miserable estate by nature, and appeared solicitous for deliverance from it. Several of them came, of their own accord, to discourse with me about their souls’ concerns; and some with tears, inquired ‘what they should do to be saved?’” (“A Brief Account of the Endeavours Used by the Missionaries,” Banner Works, ii, 433).