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On the orthodoxy of Jonathan Edwards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2014

Oliver Crisp
Oliver Crisp*
Affiliation:
Fuller Theological Seminary, 135 N. Oakland Ave, Pasadena, CA 91182, [email protected]
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Abstract

Jonathan Edwards had some strange ideas. He was an idealist like Berkeley. He denied that the world persists through time, claiming that it is continuously created out of nothing by God moment-by-moment. He also denied creaturely causal action in his doctrine of occasionalism. Moreover, he thought that the world is the necessary output of the essential creativity of the deity, embracing the idea that this is the best possible world. Often these views are not reported in popular accounts of his work, though they are widely known in the scholarly community. But is his position theologically orthodox? This article argues that he is faced with an Edwardsian Dilemma: Either he must admit that his theology proper implies that God is not metaphysically simple, or he must embrace pantheism. Neither horn seems particularly attractive. Of the two, the second seems less appealing than the first. Nevertheless, it looks as if the logic of his position presses in this direction. His idealism and Neoplatonic conception of God's necessary emanation of the world imply panentheism. When coupled with his doctrine of divine simplicity, it looks as if his position could be pressed in a pantheist direction. However, if he opts for the first horn, he must deny the doctrine of divine simplicity, which he endorses in a range of works. If God is simple, then it looks as if all his ideas imply one another and the divine essence. Yet the world is an emanation of divine ideas, which Edwards believes God constantly ‘communicates’. Suppose with Edwards that the world is an ordered series of divine ideas. Then it looks as if they must imply each other and the divine nature as well, given divine simplicity. Clearly this is intolerable, as far as orthodoxy goes. One option is for the Edwardsian to revise divine simplicity, so that God is merely a metaphysical simple like a soul. Then he may have distinct states and properties. However, in addition to this revision one would need to amend Edwards’ occasionalism because it provides an apparently insuperable problem of evil for his metaphysics. Thus, revising the first horn involves more than a little tinkering with the deep structures of Edwards’ thought. However, I argue that this is what the Edwardsian must do if she wants to hold onto a broadly orthodox Edwardsian view on these matters.

Keywords

dilemmaoccasionalismorthodoxypanentheismpantheismsimplicity
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 304 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2014 

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References

1 See Bombaro, John J., Jonathan Edwards's Vision of Reality: The Relationship of God to the World, Redemption History, and the Reprobate, Princeton Theological Monographs Series (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011)Google Scholar; Crisp, Oliver D., Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation (New York: OUP, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Elwood, Douglas, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960)Google Scholar. Similar views can be found in Strobel, Kyle, Jonathan Edwards's Theology: A Reinterpretation, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology, 19 (London: T&T Clark, 2012)Google Scholar and William J. Wainwright, ‘Jonathan Edwards’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, located at <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/edwards>; (accessed April 2014). For a rather different view of Edwards’ theology see Lee, Sang Hyun, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, expanded edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

2 Of course, some may conclude that any doctrine of God which prescinds from the doctrine of divine simplicity as it has been traditionally understood is outside the bounds of orthodoxy. This would certainly be true for Roman Catholics, for whom the doctrine is an established dogma (affirmed at Lateran IV and Vatican I). It is true of post-Reformation confessional Protestant thought as well (as found e.g. in the Westminster Confession, or the Augsburg Confession). However, I think that in the current theological climate there is much less sympathy for this claim than there is for the notion that pantheism is unorthodox. For, presumably, one could believe that God is less than simple and still hold to the catholic creeds. It would be much more difficult to subscribe to the creeds in good conscience if one was a pantheist.

3 Muller, Richard has recently argued to this effect in his magisterial Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 32–3, 276Google Scholar. Davies, Brian makes similar claims with respect to Aquinas’ doctrine in ‘Simplicity’ in Taliaferro, Charles and Meister, Chad (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), pp. 31–45Google Scholar.

4 All references to Edwards’ works are to the Yale Letterpress Edition: Miller, Perry, Smith, John E. and Stout, Harry S., general editors, The Works of Jonathan Edwards in 26 Volumes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957–2006), cited as YE, followed by volume number and page reference, in this case: YE1, p. 377Google Scholar.

5 YE3, pp. 256–7, emphasis added.

6 YE21, p. 113, emphasis added.

7 YE21, p. 116, emphasis added.

8 See Pauw, Amy Plantinga ‘“One Alone Cannot Be Excellent”: Jonathan Edwards on Divine Simplicity’, in Helm, Paul and Crisp, Oliver D. (eds), Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 115–25Google Scholar, and her monograph, ‘The Supreme Harmony of All’: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), as well as McClymond, Michael's essay, ‘Hearing the Symphony: A Critique of Some Critics of Sang Lee's and Amy Pauw's Accounts of Jonathan Edwards’ View of God’, in Schweitzer, Don (ed.), Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary: Essays in Honor of Sang Lee (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 67–92Google Scholar.

9 See Bombaro, Jonathan Edwards's Vision of Reality; Crisp, Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation; Strobel, Jonathan Edwards's Theology; and Holmes, Stephen R., ‘Does Jonathan Edwards Use a Dispositional Ontology? A Response to Sang Hyun Lee’, in Helm, Paul and Crisp, Oliver D. (eds), Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 99–114Google Scholar. See also Wainwright, ‘Jonathan Edwards’.

10 YE1, pp. 180–1.

11 YE6, pp. 215–16. See also Miscellany 267, where Edwards says ‘The mere exertion of a new thought is a certain proof of a God. For certainly there is something that immediately produces and upholds that thought; here is a new thing, and there is a necessity of a cause. It is not antecedent thoughts, for they are vanished and gone; they are past, and what is past is not.’ (YE13, p. 373.) The reasoning underlying this rather cryptic entry seems to be something like this. Past thoughts no longer exist because they are past; things which are past and therefore non-existent cannot generate present things which do exist because ex nihilo nihil fit; so some cause other than past thoughts must bring about present thoughts; only a thinking thing can bring about present thoughts; only God is an eternal thinking thing who persists from one moment to the next; so only God can bring about present thoughts; therefore God exists. But clearly, if God is the only agent capable of bringing about present thoughts this also establishes that God causes present thoughts (in creatures). Though this is not sufficient for occasionalism, it is an important step towards the view that God is the only causal agent.

12 See also Quinn, Philip L., ‘Divine Conservation, Continuous Creation, and Human Action’, in Freddoso, Alfred J. (ed.), The Existence and Nature of God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 55–79Google Scholar, as well as his ‘Divine Conservation, Secondary Causes, and Occasionalism’, in Morris, Thomas V. (ed.), Divine and Human Action (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 50–73Google Scholar. For alternative views on Edwardsian occasionalism see Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, and Daniel, Stephen, ‘Edwards’ Occasionalism’, in Schweitzer, Don (ed.), Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 15–32Google Scholar.

13 The most comprehensive recent typology of panentheisms can be found in Cooper, John's book, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009)Google Scholar.

14 John Cooper says, ‘All things considered, his affirmation that “the whole is of God, and in God, and to God” [in YE8, p. 531] is best construed philosophically as panentheism which borders on Spinozan pantheism.’ Panentheism, p. 77. Similar sentiments are expressed by Douglas Elwood in The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, and, more recently, Bombaro, Jonathan Edwards’ Vision of Reality, especially appendix A, and Crisp, Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation, ch. 7. But this line of interpretation is resisted by, among others, Sang Lee in The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, expanded edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000 [1988]), ch. 7, and, more recently, Studebaker, Steven and Caldwell III, Robert, The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards: Text, Context, and Application (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), ch. 9Google Scholar.

15 Miscellany 27a, in YE13, p. 213.

16 Miscellany 880, in YE20, p. 123.

17 YE8, p. 439.

18 YE8, p. 435. Italics in the original.

19 YE8, p. 531.

20 For discussion of early philosophical influences on Edwards, see Wallace Anderson's editorial introduction to YE6 and, on Edwards’ reading, YE26.

21 See Bombaro, Jonathan Edwards's Vision of Reality, appendix A; Crisp, Oliver D., ‘Jonathan Edwards’ Panentheism’, in Schweitzer, Don (ed.), Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary (New York: Peter Lang, 2010)Google Scholar; Crisp, ‘Jonathan Edwards, Idealism and Christology’, in Crisp, Oliver D., Revisioning Christology: Studies in The Reformed Tradition (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)Google Scholar, ch. 3, and Elwood, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards.

22 YE13, p. 295.

23 But perhaps not: Edwards might be saying something like the following. If a human soul were to be enlarged infinitely in all its capacities so that it became equivalent to a divine soul, then it would become absolutely metaphysically simple, for that is what it means for a soul to be expanded in this sense, and to be made infinite. Such a transformation would make the soul in question a maximally perfect being. And a maximally perfect being just is a being which is absolutely metaphysically simple. I thank Paul Helm for suggesting this alternative way of interpreting Edwards’ remarks to me.

24 This is pointed out in Crisp, Oliver D., Jonathan Edwards and the Metaphysics of Sin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)Google Scholar. Some similar themes are explored in Prud'homme, Joseph and Schelberg, James, ‘Disposition, Potentiality, and Beauty in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Defence of his Great Doctrine of Original Sin’, American Theological Inquiry 5/1 (2012), pp. 25–53Google Scholar.

25 See Rea, Michael C., ‘The Metaphysics of Original Sin’, in Inwagen, Peter van and Zimmerman, Dean (eds), Persons, Human and Divine (Oxford: OUP, 2009), pp. 319–56Google Scholar.

26 Crisp thinks Edwards’ position on this matter is an instance of perdurantism, not stage theory. This involves the same background metaphysics of four-dimensionalism, but construed differently. I think Rea's argument for a stage-theoretic reading of Edwards is closer to the truth than that given by Crisp.

27 Edwards, Original Sin, 4. 3, in YE3. Compare Crisp, Jonathan Edwards and the Metaphysics of Sin.

28 Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1940 [1871]), p. 220. For a recent discussion of other pantheistic objections to Edwardsian metaphysics, see Studebaker and Caldwell, Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 9.

29 Schweitzer, William M., God is a Communicative Being: Divine Communicativeness and Harmony in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards. T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology, 14 (London: T&T Clark, 2012), p. 20Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 21.

31 Ibid., p. 22.

32 YE3, pp. 256–7.