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Jonathan Edwards and the Theology of the Sixth Way

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robert C. Whittemore
Robert C. Whittemore
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University
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Extract

This, with Edwards, is established, that mind cannot conceive a state of perfect nothing. Something, somewhere, there must be; for if we say that there is absolutely nothing, we talk nonsense, inasmuch as we imply a disjunction where there is none. “Either being or absolute nothing is no disjunction, no more than whether a triangle is a triangle or not a triangle. There is no other way but only for there to be existence. There is no such thing as absolute nothing.” Some being, therefore, some place necessarily and eternally is. And if at some place then in all places, since it is no less meaningless to affirm that nothing is in some one place than it is to say that nothing is at all. “So that we see this necessary, eternal being must be infinite and omnipresent.” But if omnipresent then not solid, for solidity is nothing but resistance to other solidities, all of which we can with ease conceive as not existing, whereas this omnipresent being “is the very thing that we can never remove and conceive of its not being.” What is this being, then, that no amount of mental effort can deny? It is, says Edwards, space.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 60 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1966

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References

1. Edwards, Jonathan, ‘Of Being,’ in The Philosophy of Janathan Edwards From His Private Notebooks, edited by Townsend, Harvey G. (University of Oregon Press, 1955), p. 9Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Townsend.

2. Townsend, p. 1.

3. ibid.

4. Ibid., p. 2. My italics.

5. Ibid., p. 30.

6. Ibid., pp. 7, 8.

7. Ibid., p. 8.

8. Cornford, F. M., Greek Religious Thought (Beacon Press, 1950), p. 42.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 128.

10. Heliades, Fragment 70.

11. Enneads (McKenna translation), 2nd Edition, revised by B. S. Page (Faber & Faber, 1956), VI. 6, 7.Google Scholar

12. On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, translated by Dorothea Waley Singer in Giordano Bruno, His Life and Thought (Henry Schuman, 1950), p. 270.Google Scholar

13. Elwood, Douglas J., The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 6. Hereafter cited as Elwood.Google Scholar

14. Elwood, p. 21.

15. Ibid., p. 57.

16. Townsend. p. 87.

17. Ibid., p. 262.

18. Ibid., p. 183.

19. Ibid., pp. 17, 18.

20. Ibid., p. 183.

21. Ibid., p. 48.

22. The Works of President Edwards in ten volumes, edited by Sereno E. Dwigh (G. & C. & H. Carvill, 1830), III, p. 38.Google Scholar

23. Townsend, p. 152.

24. Ibid., p. 47.

25. In all fairness to Elwood, it should be noted that he nowhere specifically says as much. On the other hand, the whole temor of his book implies his acceptance of the premise, and, indeed, were it not presupposed his argument must dissolve.

26. That neoplatonism is not the doctrine that God duplicates Himself has been argued by Pistorius, P. V. in his important but neglected book, Plotinus and Neoplatonism (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1952)Google Scholar. According to Pistorius, the three hypostases of the neoplatonic godhead are not a gradation of three separate beings, as is generally believed, but are rather a trinity more intimate in type than that of Christian theology inasmuch as the third member, that Soul which contains the universe, is itself contained by the Intellectual-Principle, which latter is, in its turn, contained by the First (One). If this interpretation be allowed, then neoplatonism is properly panentheism. Withal, it remains to be shown that the neoplatonism of Edwards is of such a sort as that described by Pistorius.

27. Works (Dwight edition), III. pp. 81–82Google Scholar. Edwards' italics.

28. Ibid., III. p. 81. Edwards' italics.

29. Those who have heeded the distinction earlier noted between panentheism and Christian neoplatonism will not, I think, be tempted to read panentheism into Edwards' employment of this phrase.

30. Works (Dwight edition), III. p. 84.Google Scholar

31. Luce, A. A., Berkeley's Immaterialism (London: Nelson, 1945), pp. 69–77Google Scholar. Misinterpretation, because Luce falls into the same trap as ensnares Elwood; he too takes the fact of immaterialism's implying nothing outside God to mean that immaterialism is panentheism.

32. See Townsend, pp. 146, 149; also Freedom of the Will (Yale edition), pp. 182, 377, 383Google Scholar; also The Nature of True Virtue (Ann Arbor Paperback edition), pp. 17–18, 30, 40–41.Google Scholar

33. Herein is exemplified one basic difference between Eastern and Western philosophical theology, For the relation signified by Figure 7 is precisely that envisaged by Sankara in his doctrine of Māyāvada.

34. See footnote 26.

35. I omit consideration of the remaining five logical possibilities, comprising the five possible combinations of two broken circles, inasmuch as none of these illustrates any relation seriously maintained.

36. Miller, Perry, Jonathan Edwards (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1949), pp. 237–238.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., pp. 50–51.

38. Ibid., p. 51.

39. Tomas, Vincent, ‘The Modernity of Jonathan Edwards,” The New England Quarterly, XXV (1952), p. 71.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 70.

41. “There are,” answers Tomas, “numerous places where he arrives at conclusions unacceptable to the modern mind, by arguments not entirely cogent, to the modern mind. Yet these conclusions were credible, and these arguments were cogent, to Edwards. The reason is that he accepted Scripture as revealed truth, and the modern mind does not. In this sense, Edwards “took orders” from Scripture, just as an empiricist will not “take orders” from Scripture, but only from experience.” (Ibid., p. 77). In this sense, then, his philosophy is medieval. Is this to say that it lacks contemporary relevance? On this question, Tomas hedges. Unlike Miller, he will not categorize medieval philosophy as “scholastic rubbish.” But neither has he anything to say on its or on Edwards' behalf. We are left with the impression that a philosophy in the service of Scripture is no philosophy for our times.

42. Memoir, , in Works (Dwight edition), I. 609Google Scholar. Dwight's italics.

43. As Miller sees it, the defense is “a strictly empirical investigation, and induction in the manner of Boyle and Newton, of a law for phenomena” (Jonathan Edwards, p. 267), his justification for this conclusion being a statement by Edwards to the effect that what he (Edwards) is arguing from in this work are the facts. However, as Tomas points out, and Miller himself concedes, the word ‘fact’ as here employed by Edwards means ‘statements in Scripture taken as facts.’ Which being so, says Tomas, “the passage (Works, Dwight edition, II, p. 329Google Scholar) does not tend to show that Edwards was as empirical as Newton was when he plotted the orbits of planets and comets. On the contrary, it suggests that if Edwards' method was indeed Newton's method, there is reason to fear the stars will stray from their courses.” (op., cit., p. 81).

44. Freedom of the Will (Yale edition), p. 182.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., p. 268.

46. True Virtue (paperback edition), p. 100.Google Scholar

47. Freedom of the Will (Yale edition), p. 268.Google Scholar

48. Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1956), p. 203.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., p. 195.

50. ibid.

51. It will be said that Edwards himself was so far from being aware of the affinity of his ontology with that of Aquinas, that he ridicules the writings of the latter as being so much scholastic rubbish. And so, by implication at least, he does (see Freedom of the Will, Yale edition, p. 228)Google Scholar. On the other hand, there is nothing in Edwards' writings, published or unpublished, to suggest that he enjoyed anything more than a hearsay knowledge of the Summas.

52. Edwards, , Works (Dwight edition), III, p. 13.Google Scholar

53. Freedom of the Will (Yale edition), p. 377.Google Scholar

54. Townsend, p. 256.

55. Elwood, p. 28.

56. Edwards, , ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Works (Dwight edition), VII, p. 170.Google Scholar

57. St. Anselm, , Proslogium (Chicago: Open Court, 1948), p. 13.Google Scholar

58. Summa Theologica, I. Q.19, art. 7.

59. Specifically, Malachi 3:6 and those related passages in Scripture which Edwards takes as his authority for asserting the immutability of God. See Freedom of the Will (Yale edition), p. 254.Google Scholar

60. Townsend, pp. 187, 188.

61. Ibid., p. 188.

62. Ibid., p. 189.

63. Summa Theologica, I. Q.1, art.8, rep. obj.2. For Edwards' views on the subject, see ‘Observations on the Scriptures;—their Authority and Necessity,’ in Works (Dwight edition), VII, pp. 244–261; also ‘The Insufficiency of Reason as a Substitute for Revelation,’ Ibid., pp. 261–277; also ‘Observations Concerning the Mysteries of Scripture’, Ibid., XI, pp. 310–322; and ‘Notes on the Bible,’ Ibid., IX, pp. 115–158.

64. Works (Dwinght edition), II, p. 448.Google Scholar

65. Elwood, pp. 3, 7, 9–11, 155. His association of Edwards with the work of Tillich, Heim, and Niebuhr would seem to indicate that he finds Neo-Orthodoxy in some of its forms and facets panentheistic. Nor would I say him nay. See Whittemore, R., ‘Karl Heim: Panentheism and the Space of God,’ Concordia Theological Monthly, Vol. 30 (1959), pp. 824–837.Google Scholar

66. Thus it is greatly to be regreatted that the four volumes promised by the editors of the Yale edition of the Works have been so long delayed. It may be that their appearance will add nothing new to the system of docotorines as presently given in Townsend. Withal, it is entirely possible that many of the conclusions here drawn will require to be modified in the light of the materials forthcoming.

67. Edwards, , Religious Affections (New Haven: Yale, 1959), p. 133Google Scholar. For a discussion of this aspect of Edwards' thought see, Whittemore, R., Makers of the American Mind (New York: Morrow, 1964), Ch. II.Google Scholar

68. See Freedom of the Will (Yale edition), p. 131.Google Scholar

69. Hopkins, Samuel, Memoris of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards (James Black, 1815), pp. viii–ixGoogle Scholar.