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EDWARDS, JONATHAN (1703—1758)
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See also:EDWARDS, See also:JONATHAN (1703—1758) , See also:American theologian and philosopher, was See also:born on the 5th of See also:October 1703 at See also:East (now See also:South) See also:Windsor, See also:Connecticut. His earliest known ancestor was See also:Richard Edwards, Welsh by See also:birth, a See also:London clergyman in See also: The years 1720 to 1726 are partially recorded in his See also:diary and in the resolutions for his own conduct which he drew up at this time. He had See also:long been an eager seeker after salvation and was not fully satisfied as to his own " See also:conversion " until an experience in his last year in college, when he lost his feeling that the See also:election of some to salvation and of others to eternal damnation was " a horrible See also:doctrine," and reckoned it " exceedingly pleasant, See also:bright and sweet. " He now took a See also:great and new joy in the beauties of nature, and delighted in the allegorical See also:interpretation of the See also:Song of Solomon. Balancing these mystic joys is the stern See also:tone of his Resolutions, in which he is almostascetic in his eagerness to live earnestly and soberly, to See also:waste no time, to maintain the strictest See also:temperance in eating and drinking. On the 15th of See also:February 1727 he was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. He was a student minister, not a visiting pastor, his See also:rule being thirteen See also:hours of study a See also:day. In the same year he married Sarah See also:Pierrepont, then aged seventeen, daughter of See also: In 1733 a revival of See also:religion began in Northampton, and reached such intensity in the See also:winter of 1734 and the following See also:spring as to threaten the business of the See also:town. In six months nearly three See also:hundred were admitted to the church. The revival gave Edwards an opportunity of studying the See also:process of conversion in all its phases and varieties, and he recorded his observations with psychological minuteness and discrimination in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton (1737). A year later he published Discourses on Various Important Subjects, the five sermons which had proved most effective in the revival, and of these none, he tells us, was so immediately effective as that on the See also:Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners, from the See also:text, " That every mouth may be stopped." Another See also:sermon, published in 1734, on the Reality of Spiritual See also:Light set forth what he regarded as the inner, moving principle of the revival, the doctrine of a " See also:special " grace in the immediate and supernatural divine See also:illumination of the soul. In the spring of 1735 the See also:movement began to subside and a reaction set in. But the relapse was brief, and the Northampton revival, which had spread through the Connecticut valley and whose fame had reached See also:England and See also:Scotland, was followed in 1739—1740 by the See also:Grew. Awakening, distinctively under the leadership of Edwards. The movement met with no sympathy from the orthodox leaders of the church. In 1741 Edwards published in its See also:defence The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, dealing particularly with the phenomena most criticized, the swoonings, outcries and See also:convulsions. These " bodily effects," he insisted, were not " distinguishing marks " of the work of the:Spirit of God; but so See also:bitter was the feeling against the revival in the more strictly Puritan churches that in 1742 he was forced to write a second See also:apology, Thoughts on the Revival in New England, his See also:main See also:argument being the great moral improvement of the See also:country. In the same pamphlet he defends an See also:appeal to the emotions, and See also:advocates See also:preaching terror when necessary, even to children, who in God's sight " are See also:young vipers . . . if not See also:Christ's." He considers " bodily effects " incidentals to the real work of God, but his own mystic devotion and the experiences of his wife during the Awakening (which he gives in detail) make him think that the divine visitation usually overpowers the See also:body, a view in support of which he quotes Scripture. In reply to Edwards, See also: The church by a See also:vote of more than 200 to 23 ratified the See also:action of the council, and finally a town meeting voted that Edwards should not be allowed to occupy the Northampton pulpit, though he did this on occasion as late as May 1755. He evinced no rancour or spite; his " Farewell Sermon " was dignified and temperate; nor is it to be ascribed to chagrin that in a See also:letter to Scotland after his dismissal he expresses his preference for Presbyterian to Congregational church See also:government. His position at the time was not unpopular throughout New England, and it is needless to say that his doctrine that the See also:Lord's Supper is not a cause of regeneration and that communicants should be professing Christians has since (very largely through the efforts of his See also:pupil See also:Joseph See also:Bellamy) become a See also:standard of New England See also:Congregationalism.
Edwards with his large family was now thrown upon the See also:world, but offers of aid quickly came to him. A See also:parish in Scotland could have been procured, and he was called to a See also:Virginia church. He declined both, to become in 1750 pastor of the church in See also:Stockbridge and a missionary to the Housatonic See also:Indians To the Indians he preached through an interpreter, and their interests he boldly and successfully defended by attacking the whites
1 Edwards recognized the abuse of impulses and impressions, opposed itinerant and See also:lay preachers, and defended a well-ordered and well-educated See also:clergy.
2 These were probably not fiction like Pamela, as See also:Sir See also:Leslie See also:Stephen suggested, for Edwards listed several of See also:Richardson's novels for his own reading, and considered Sir Charles Grandison a very moral and excellent work.who were using their See also:official position among them to increase their private fortunes. In Stockbridge he wrote the Humble Relation, also called Reply to See also:Williams (1752), which was an See also:answer to Solomon Williams (1700-1776), a relative and a bitter opponent of Edwards as to the qualifications for full communion;' and he there composed the See also:treatises on which his reputation as a philosophical theologian chiefly rests, the essay on See also:Original See also:Sin, the Dissertation concerning the Nature of True Virtue, the Dissertation concerning the End for which God created the World, and the great work on the Will, written in four months and a half, and published in 1754 under the title, An Inquiry into the See also:Modern Prevailing ?Notions Respecting that Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency.
In 1757, on the See also:death of See also:President See also:Burr, who five years before had married Edwards's daughter See also:Esther, he reluctantly accepted the See also:presidency of the College of New See also:Jersey (now See also:Princeton University), where he was installed on the 16th of February 1758. Almost immediately afterwards he was inoculated for smallpox, which was raging in Princeton and vicinity, and, always feeble, he died of the inoculation on the 28th of See also: The Edwardean See also:System.—It is difficult to See also:separate Edwards's philosophy from his theology, except as the former is contained in the early notes on the Mind, where he says that See also:matter exists only in See also:idea; that space is God; that minds only are real; that in See also:meta-See also:physical strictness there is no being but God; that entity is the greatest and only good; and that God as See also:infinite entity, wherein the agreement of being with being is absolute, is the supreme See also:excellency, the supreme good. It seems certain that these conclusions were See also:independent of See also:Berkeley and See also:Malebranche, and were not See also:drawn from See also:Arthur See also:Collier's Clavis universalis (1713), with which they have much in See also:common, but were suggested, in See also:part at least, by Locke's doctrine of ideas, See also:Newton's theory of See also:colours, and See also:Cudworth's See also:Platonism, with all of which Edwards was early See also:familiar. But they were never See also:developed systematically, and the conception of the material universe here contended for does not again explicitly re-appear in any of his writings. The fundamental metaphysical postulate that being and God are ultimately identical remained, however, the philosophical basis of all his thinking, and reverence for this being as the supreme good remained the fundamental disposition of his mind. That he did not interpret this idea in a Spinozistic sense was due to his more spiritual conception of " being " and to the reaction on his philosophy of his theology. The theological See also:interest, indeed, came in the end to predominate, and philosophy to appear as an See also:instrument for the defence of Calvinism. Perhaps the best See also:criticism of Edwards's philosophy as a whole is that, instead of being elaborated on purely rational principles, it is mixed up with a system of theological conceptions with which it is never thoroughly combined, and that it is exposed to all the disturbing effects of theological controversy. Moreover, of one of his most central convictions, that of the sovereignty of God in election, he confesses that he could give no See also:account. Edwards's reputation as a thinker is chiefly associated with his See also:treatise on the Will, which is still sometimes called " the one large contribution that See also:America has made to the deeper philosophic thought of the world." The aim of this treatise was to refute the doctrine of See also:free-will, since he considered it the logical, as distinguished from the sentimental, ground of most of the Arminian objections to Calvinism. He defines the will as that by which the " mind chooses anything." To See also:act voluntarily, he says, is to act electively. So far he and his opponents are agreed. But choice, he holds, is not arbitrary; it is determined in every case by " that See also:motive which as it stands in the view of the mind is the strongest," and that motive is strongest which presents in the immediate See also:object of volition the " greatest apparent good," that is, the greatest degree of agreeableness or pleasure. What this is in a given case depends on a multitude of circumstances, See also:external and See also:internal, all contributing to See also:form the " cause " of which the voluntary act and its consequences are the " effect." Edwards contends that the connexion between cause and effect here is as "sure and perfect " as in the See also:realm of physical nature and constitutes a " moral See also:necessity." He reduces the opposite doctrine to three assumptions, all of which he shows to be untenable: (I) " a self-determining See also:power in the will "; (2) " in-difference , ... that the mind previous to the act of volition (is) in equilibrio "; (3) " contingence ... as opposed to ... any fixed and certain connexion (of the volition) with some previous ground or See also:reason for its existence." Although he denies See also:liberty to the will in this sense—indeed, strictly speaking, neither liberty nor necessity, he says, is properly applied to the will, " for the will itself is not an See also:agent that has a will "—he nevertheless insists that the subject willing is a free moral agent, and argues that without the determinate connexion between volition and motive which he asserts and the libertarians deny, moral agency would be impossible. Liberty, he holds, is simply freedom from constraint, " the power . . . that any one has to do as he pleases." This power man possesses. And that the right or wrong of choice depends not on the cause of choice but on its nature, he illustrates by the example of Christ, whose acts were necessarily holy, yet truly virtuous, praise-worthy and rewardable. Even God Himself, Edwards here maintains, has no other liberty than this, to carry out without constraint His will, See also:wisdom and inclination. There is no necessary connexion between Edwards's doctrine of the motivation of choice and the system of Calvinism with which it is congruent. Similar doctrines have more frequently perhaps been associated with theological See also:scepticism. But for him the alternative was between Calvinism and Arminianism, simply because of the See also:historical situation, and in the refutation of Arminianism on the assumptions common to both sides of the controversy, he must be considered completely successful. As a general argument his account of the determination of the will is defective, notably in his abstract conception of the will and in his inadequate, but suggestive, treatment of See also:causation, in regard to which he anticipates in important respects the doctrine of See also:Hume. Instead of making the motive to choice a See also:factor within the See also:concrete process of volition, he regards it as a cause antecedent to the exercise of a special mental See also:faculty. Yet his conception of this faculty as functioning only in and through motive and character, inclination and See also:desire, certainly carries us a long way beyond the See also:abstraction in which his opponents See also:stuck, that of a See also:bare faculty without any assignable content. Modern psycho-logy has strengthened the contention for a fixed connexion between motive and act by reference to subconscious and unconscious processes of which Edwards, who thought that nothing could affect the mind which was unperceived, little dreamed; at the same time. at least in some of its developments, especially in its freer use of genetic and organic conceptions, it has rendered much in the older forms of statement obsolete, and has given a new meaning to the idea of self-determination, which, as applied to an abstract power, Edwards rightly rejected as absurd. Edwards's controversy with the Arminians was continued in the essay on Original Sin, which was in the See also:press at the time of his death. He here breaks with See also:Augustine and the See also:Westminster See also:Confession by arguing, consistently with his theory of the Will, that See also:Adam had no more freedom of will than we have, but had a special endowment, a supernatural See also:gift of grace, which by See also:rebellion against God was lost, and that this gift was withdrawn from his descendants, not because of any fictitious imputation of See also:guilt, but because of their real participation in his guilt by actual identity with him in his transgression. The Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue, posthumously published, is justly regarded as one of the most original See also:works on See also:ethics of the 18th See also:century, and is the more remarkable as reproducing, with no essential modification, ideas on the subject written in the author's youth in the notes on the Mind. Virtue is conceived as the beauty of moral qualities. Now beauty, in Edwards's view, always consists in a harmonious relation in the elements involved, an agreement of being with being. He conceives, therefore, of virtue, or moral beauty, as consisting in the cordial agreement or consent to intelligent being. He defines it as benevolence (good-will), or rather as a disposition to benevolence, towards being in general. This disposition, he argues, has no regard primarily to beauty in the object, nor is it primarily based on gratitude. Its first object is being, " simply considered," and it is accordingly proportioned, other things being equal, to the object's " degree of existence." He admits, however, benevolent being as a second object, on the ground that such an object, having a like virtuous propensity, " is, as it were, enlarged, extends to, and in some sort comprehends being in general." ' In brief, since God is the " being of beings " and comprehends, in the fullest extent, benevolent consent to being in general, true virtue consists essentially in a supreme love to God. Thus the principle of virtue—Edwards has nothing to say of " morality "—is identical with the principle of religion. From this standpoint Edwards combats every See also:lower view. He will not admit that there is any See also:evidence of true virtue in the approbation of virtue and hatred of See also:vice, in the workings of See also:conscience or in the exercises of the natural affections; he thinks that these may all spring from self-love and the association of ideas, from " See also:instinct " or from a " moral sense of a secondary See also:kind " entirely different from " a sense or relish of the essential beauty of true virtue." Nor does he recognize the possibility of a natural development of true virtue out of the sentiments directed on the " private systems "; on the contrary, he sets the love of particular being, when not subordinated to being in general, in opposition to the latter and as See also:equivalent to treating it with the greatest contempt. All that he allows is that the See also:perception of natural beauty may, by its resemblance to the See also:primary spiritual beauty, quicken the disposition to divine love in those who are already under the See also:influence of a truly virtuous See also:temper. Closely connected with the essay on Virtue is the boldly speculative Dissertation on the End for which God Created the World. As, according to the doctrine of virtue, God's virtue consists primarily in love to Himself, so His final end in creation is conceived to be, not as the Arminians held, the happiness of His creatures, but Hisown See also:glory. Edwards supposes in the nature of God an original disposition to an " See also:emanation " of His being, and it is the excellency of this divine being, particularly in the elect, which is, in his view, the final cause and motive of the world. Edwards makes no attempt to reconcile the pantheistic See also:element in his philosophy with the individuality implied in moral government. He seems to waver between the See also:opinion that finite individuals have no independent being and the opinion that they have it in an infinitesimal degree; and the conception of " degrees of existence " in the essay on Virtue is not developed to elucidate the point. His theological conception of God, at any See also:rate, was not abstractly pantheistic, in spite of the abstractness of his See also:language about " being," but frankly theistic and trinitarian. He held the doctrine of the trinitarian distinctions indeed to be a necessity of reason. His Essay on the Trinity, first printed in 1903, was long supposed to have been withheld from publication because of its containing Arian or Sabellian tendencies. It contains in fact nothing more questionable than an attempted See also:deduction of the orthodox Nicene doctrine, unpalatable, however, to Edwards's immediate disciples, who were too little speculative to appreciate his statement of the subordination of the " persons " in the divine " oeconomy," and who openly derided the doctrine of the eternal See also:generation of the Son as " eternal nonsense "; and this perhaps was the original reason why the essay was not published. Though so typically a scholar and abstract thinker on the one See also:hand and on the other a mystic, Edwards is best known to the See also:present generation as a preacher of See also:hell See also:fire. The particular reason for this seems to See also:lie in a single sermon preached at See also:Enfield, Connecticut, in See also:July 1741 from the text, " Their See also:foot shall slide in due time," and commonly known from its title, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The occasion of this sermon is usually overlooked. It was preached to a congregation who were careless and loose in their lives at a time when " the neighbouring towns were in great See also:distress for their souls.'.' A contemporary account of it says that in spite of Edwards's See also:academic See also:style of preaching, the See also:assembly was " deeply impressed and bowed down, with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard." Edwards preached other sermons of this type, but this one was the most extreme. The style of the imprecatory sermon, however, was no more See also:peculiar to him than to his See also:period. He was not a great preacher in the See also:ordinary meaning of the word. His gestures were scanty, his See also:voice was not powerful, but he was desperately in See also:earnest, and he held his See also:audience whether his sermon contained a picturesque and de-tailed description of the torments of the damned, or, as was often the case, spoke of the love and See also:peace of God in the See also:heart cf man. He was an earnest, devout See also:Christian, and a man of blameless See also:life. His insight into the spiritual life was profound. Certainly the most able metaphysician and the most influential religious thinker of America, he must See also:rank in theology, dialectics, See also:mysticism and philosophy with See also:Calvin and See also:Fenelon, Augustine and See also:Aquinas, See also:Spinoza and See also:Novalis; with Berkeley and Hume as the great See also:English philosophers of the 18th century; and with See also: See also:Samuel See also:Hopkins laid even greater stress than Edwards on the theorem that virtue consists in disinterested benevolence; .but he went See also:counter to Edwards in holding that unconditional resignation to God's decrees, or more concretely, willingness to be damned for the glory of God, was the test of true regeneration; for Edwards, though often quoted as holding this doctrine, protested against it in the strongest terms. Hopkins, moreover, denied Edwards's identity theory of original sin, saying that our sin was a result of Adam's and not identical with it; and he went much further than Edwards in his objection to " means of grace," claiming that the unregenerate were more and more guilty for continual rejection of the See also:gospel if they were outwardly righteous and availed themselves of the means of grace. Stephen See also:West (1735-1819), too, out-Edwardsed Edwards in his defence of the treatise on the Freedom of the Will, and See also: Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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