Jonathan Edwards? Really?

Scott Lyons asks some great questions in a comment on my recent post on Jonathan Edwards. I became interested in Edwards in 2003, when I read the following article in Traces (website apparently down this weekend):

The Thinker of Puritan New England (internet archive copy).

Then, I learned that Edwards was one of the subjects of Fr. Luigi Giussani's book, American Protestantism (not yet translated into English). So, I read Gura's bio of Edwards, which is fascinating because it's a secular bio of Edwards and makes the case for Edwards to a non-evangelical readership. In this, it follows in the path of an earlier bio by Perry Miller, painting Edwards as a brilliant thinker who transcends Puritanism. I came to a better understanding of Edwards through Marsden's two bios of Edwards, learning that Edwards was not unusual in his interest in Continental Philosophy and in natural science. In his introduction to Understanding Jonathan Edwards, Gerard McDermott notes that in antebellum America, Edwards name permeated most of the continuum of Protestantism. Marsden is a great biographer because he doesn't limit himself to Puritanism but grasps the greater sweep of cultural history including the European and Catholic background of Christianity in America.

For me, learning about Edwards is an adventure in better understanding my heritage as an American, as a descendent from Presybterians, and as a son of the American Revolution. What interests me is his humanity, his vibrant Christian experience, and the earliest contours of Christianity in America. I'm interested in his theology of beauty and in his observations of affectivity in religious life.

Some particular points:

• "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

There's only one sentence in this that I have a problem with, and that's the comparison of God with a capricious, contemptuous child torturing a spider. The theme of "his foot shall slide in due time" is clearly explored and the analogy of man as walking unawares over a pit of destruction is very apt. We think the ground is solid beneath us, but in truth we are upheld by the mercy of God.

• And what do you do with Calvinism?

The Catholic Church has introduced me to the face of the living God in Jesus Christ. The teachings of the Church exist precisely in order to safeguard this encounter, and that this encounter may spread and grow. As a Catholic, I am interested in discovering the truth where it may be found, even among Calvinists. Lutherans may forget Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther; Calvinists may forget John Calvin and Woodrow Wilson; and Evangelicals may forget Francis Schaeffer. But Catholics never will — we can't resist the glimmers of light wherever they break forth. It's my certain faith in the Church that enables me to risk treading among the Calvinists.

• double predestination and limited atonement.

Double predestination and limited atonement are mistaken beliefs. I wonder to what degree these mistakes led to the suicide of Joseph Hawley when Edwards was pastor. Another consequence of these beliefs can be a fatalism regarding the salvation of others. But given Edwards's missionary zeal, this belief did not seem to impede him. This belief was more of a hinderance in the Second Great Awakening.

An Invitation to Discover Jonathan Edwards

America's First Theologian and the Rise of Global Calvinism

Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America’s Theologian
Edited by Gerald R. McDermott
Oxford University Press, 2009. $24.95.

Living just before the American Revolution, Jonathan Edwards was a leader in the Great Awakening revivals and evangelization of American Indians. He struggled especially against the Deism of the Enlightenment. During the Civil War, his influence was widespread in America. And today, Edwards benefits from a global resurgence of Calvinism and dissatisfaction with rationalism.

Edwards scholar Gerald McDermott edits a generous, pluralistic, readable collection of introductions to Edwards’s thought. Eight topics are introduced by experts with responses written mostly by scholars previously unfamiliar with Edwards. McDermott himself contributes an introduction, conclusion, topical essay and response. He seeks dialogue among Protestants, Catholics, world religions, and society.

This collection focuses on the breadth of Edwards’s thought and “that beauty, not wrath, was at the center of his vision of God” (201). Essays highlight Edwards’s philosophy, literary life, and typological theology. Miklos Vetö examines the impact of John Locke and Francis Hutcheson on Edwards. Douglas A. Sweeney locates Edwards’s reading of the Bible in relation to Origen, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Sang Hyun Lee describes Edwards’s thought on the role of affectivity in knowing, the changed affectivity of a converted person, and a concrete mysticism which sees God’s beauty in nature.

Edwards considered the Catholic Church and Islam to be the two antichrists, and a prejudice against Catholicism does appear in a couple of the essays, notably by European authors — reminding me that friendship between Evangelicals and Catholics is a recent phenomenon in America. McDermott has carefully arranged the essays to foster dialogue and bring out the best in contributors. This collection is a starting point for understanding the American experience better, an open door to dialogue between Catholics and Protestants, and an opportunity to learn from the vibrant Christian experience of a man who lived when the American experience was just unfolding.

"Mr. Edwards and the Spider" by Robert Lowell

A Couple of Posts on Edwards and McDermott

Jonathan Edwards on Revival

by Scot McKnight at BeliefNet/JesusCreed

This article discusses McDermott's Understanding Jonathan Edwards, highlighting the theme of revival. 

What are Religious Affections?

by Paul Whiting at A School Without Walls

This article discusses McDermott's Seeing God as an easy introduction to Edwards's work, Religious Affections, with a handy chart comparing affections to emotions. I would add also that Edwards's understanding of affections is similar to the Biblical/ Augustinian understanding of the heart, which also finds its way into the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) #2563:

The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." 

The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. 

The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.

Although the CCC uses the term, heart, throughout its text, it doesn't define it expansively until the above passage in Section 4: "Christian Prayer."

____
photo is of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, wearing his habit emblazoned with the cross of Christ rooted in the heart.

Jonathan Edwards, Gerald McDermott, Tibor Fabiny

So, I've been reading along in my Understanding Jonathan Edwards. It's an adventerous book, and I thought I would share a few notes at this point.

McDermott is a brilliant and generous theologian. Although this is the first time I've read him, I'm very pleased that he makes his own substantial contribution to the collection: a meaty introduction ("How to Understand the American Theologian") and conclusion ("Edwards's Relevance Today"), a topical article on "Edwards on the World Religions," and a response article to Tibor Fabiny's article, "Edwards and Biblical Typology."

The collection itself is pluralistic and generous: 8 topics by a diversity of Edwards scholars, and "each chapter is followed by a response from a European scholar not previously familiar with Edwards" (9) - except of course for McDermott's own response to Fabiny.

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Fabiny makes some interesting connection between Edwards and Shakespeare, Luther, and the Metaphysical poets. I'd like to read something longer by Fabiny, but from what I see here he seems to give short shrift to the typology practiced during the patristic period and the middle ages. For example, he says that "The Fathers, however, did not clearly distinguish their typological method from the allegorism commonly used by the Greeks and their Hellenistic civilization" (97). Here, I would expect a citation from a patristics scholar to give some weight to what otherwise is a commonly held truism. The two modern scholars of typology cited are Goppelt from 1939 and Gerhard von Rad from 1952. I wonder what perspective contemporary Origen scholarship could provide for seeing the context of Edwards. Or what affinities there are between Augustine and Edwards. Or what about Henri de Lubac's Medieval Exegesis?

My point here is not so much to fault Fabiny for focusing on the Reformation and the 17th Century, but to suggest that Edwards may be more in the patristic and medieval tradition than one might expect a Reformed theologian to be. In fact, McDermott stresses a continuity between the Fathers and the Reformers: "Edwards, like the Fathers and Reformers, refused to separate letter and spirit" (111).

[1/24/09 correction: in the chapter preceding Fabiny's, Douglas Sweeney offers a careful and detailed history of typology, including both Origen and Augustine.]

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This book is definitely launching me deeper into my appreciation for Edwards, and soon I will begin to read some more of Edwards's own writings. I also find it interesting that McDermott focuses on Edwards's views on justification as forming "a bridge between the two traditions" (210). For my part, I see many connections between Edwards's theology and Catholic tradition, and justification is just not as interesting to me as certain other areas (in no particular order):

• morality and natural law
  
• typology
• the analogy of being with Being
• the Trinity as a Communion of Persons
• creation as the unfolding of God's love
• discernment of spirits
• the transcendentals: beauty, truth, and goodness
• the reasonableness of faith, that is, knowledge through testimony

I should say also, that the more I read of and about Edwards, the more interested I am in reading what Msgr. Luigi Giussani wrote about Edwards in his study, American Protestantism. But since the English translation is not ready yet, I will have to watch and wait.

A Reasonable Faith: Jonathan Edwards Gets it Right

More from Marsden, this time beginning with a direct quote. Seriously, this is a great book to own:

"'Multitudes of free thinkers,' he argued in his 'Controversies' notebook, 'deceive themselves through the ambiguous or equivocal use of the word REASON.' Their 'blunder' was in not making a proper distinction between two uses of 'reason.' 'Sometimes by the word reason,' he observed, 'is intended the same as argument or evidence... as when we say we should believe nothing without reason or contrary to reason... or against evidence.' That legitimate use of reason as an essential tool should be distinguished from making the unjustified claim that reason should be the 'highest rule,' in judging Scripture. The latter would be to speak as though 'evidence and divine revelation [were] entirely distinct, implying that divine revelation is not of the nature of evidence or argument.' It would illegitimately enthrone 'reasonable opinions' that humans arrived at on their own as necessarily higher than what they could learn from special revelation" (476, ellipses and interpolations are Marsden's).

And a further ramification of the above point:

"When Edwards [...] point[ed] out that there were many truths in electricity, magnetism, and the like that were well attested and accepted as 'reasonable' even though their first principles were not understood, he was defending history, when it is a well-attested experience, as a source of truth" (487, ellipses are mine).

Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 487

Received: Understanding Jonathan Edwards

Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America's Theologian
Gerald R McDermott
ISBN10: 0195373448
Paper, 248 pages
Also available: hardback
Oct 2008, In Stock
Price: $24.95

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) is widely recognized as America's greatest religious mind. A torrent of books, articles, and dissertations on Edwards have been released since 1949, the year that Perry Miller published the intellectual biography that launched the modern explosion of Edwards studies. This collection offers an introduction to Edwards's life and thought, pitched at the level of the educated general reader. Each chapter serves as a general introduction to one of Edwards's major topics, including revival, the Bible, beauty, literature, philosophy, typology, and even world religions. Each is written by a leading expert on Edwards's work. The book will serve as an ideal 

Edwards: a Couple of Brilliant Bits

Marsden quotes Edwards on original sin:

"One might think of it, Edwards suggested in a long note, as though 'Adam and all his posterity had coexisted.' and had been constituted by God as one complex person, as a tree is connected to its root or as the members of the body are connected to the head" (455).

God's plan to share happiness with creation, Marsden paraphrasing & quoting Edwards:

"The happiness of humans, then, when rightly understood, is not an ultimate end of creation in any way apart from God and God's glory. 'The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back to the original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair.'

That last sentence encapsulated the central premise of his entire thought. It is as though the universe is an explosion of God's glory. Perfect goodness, beauty, and love radiate from God and draw creatures to ever increasing share in the Godhead's joy and delight. 'God's respect to the creature's good, and his respect to himself,' Edwards explained, 'is not divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself.... The more happiness the greater union: when the happiness is perfect, the union will be perfect. And as the happiness will be increasing to eternity, the union will become more and more strict and perfect; nearer and more like to that between the Father and the Son.' The ultimate end of creation, then, is union in love between God and loving creatures. Because eternity is infinite, this union between God and the saints can be ever increasing, like a line ascending toward and infinite height but never reaching it. So the saints' happiness will continually increase as they are drawn ever closer toward perfect union with God" (463).

Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 

ellipsis above is Marsden's

An Interesting Book: Understanding Jonathan Edwards by Gerald R. McDermott

Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America's Theologian
Gerald R McDermott
ISBN10: 0195373448
Paper, 248 pages
Also available: hardback
Oct 2008, In Stock
Price: $24.95

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) is widely recognized as America's greatest religious mind. A torrent of books, articles, and dissertations on Edwards have been released since 1949, the year that Perry Miller published the intellectual biography that launched the modern explosion of Edwards studies. This collection offers an introduction to Edwards's life and thought, pitched at the level of the educated general reader. Each chapter serves as a general introduction to one of Edwards's major topics, including revival, the Bible, beauty, literature, philosophy, typology, and even world religions. Each is written by a leading expert on Edwards's work. The book will serve as an ideal first encounter with the thought of "America's theologian."

• Kenneth P. Minkema
  
• Chris Chun
  
• Harry S. Stout
  
• Willem van Vlastuin
  
• Douglas A. Sweeney
  
• Wolter H. Rose
  
• Tibor Fabiny
  
• Sang Hyun Lee
  
• Katalin G. Kallay
  
• Wilson H. Kimnach
  
• Anna Svetlikova
  
• Miklos Veto
  
• Magdalena Sevcikova
  
• Michal Valco