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TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 02 Edwards in History
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The Classical Synthesis of Philosophy and Revelation
Unlike Karl Barth who believed that that which is philosophical is not Christian and that which is Christian is not philosophical, *1* the Bible, the church in general and Edwards, very particularly, saw a perfect harmony. If this be so, Edwards is in harmony with the main historic position. This chapter will try to indicate this pattern. I conclude with a glance at our own era to see where the church is. If she is more with Barth than with Edwards she is at odds with herself and Edwards may be a necessary corrective.
1. The Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture
God wrote two books - the Christian theologians say - the book of nature and the book of Scripture. The first is common revelation because everyone has this book and everyone can read it - “Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.” (Psa_19:2) The second book is special revelation because this is given in a book to the literate minority of mankind. Edwards argues the absolute necessity of such a book in, “Of the Medium of Moral Government - particularly conversation” (M 864, M 1196). *2* Furthermore, though the Bible confirms common revelation in “mixed articles,” it contains items specifically and exclusively its own. The first book is called natural revelation because it is derived from nature and human nature: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. . . .” (Rom_1:20)
The second book is called supernatural revelation for though it contains and confirms truths revealed by nature, it also contains what is above and beyond nature, though never, strictly speaking, contrary to it. If the first book is produced by divine creation; the second is by divine inspiration. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. . . .” (2Ti_3:16; cf. Psa_19:7 ff). In later chapters I will discuss more thoroughly Edwards’ doctrine of Scripture.
Christianity depends on special revelation. If there had been merely common revelation there would have been an argument for theism but not for Christianity. As we have noted, special revelation confirms while transcending natural revelation. The second revelation does not go against the first but beyond it. Nature reveals God but not God’s gospel. It is like a department store bill telling much about the store’s efficiency, fairness, orderliness, and value, but nothing about where to get the money to pay it. Nature reveals God to the sinner, but not how to be reconciled to Him. Reconciliation is what the second volume stresses as, “The History of Redemption.”
While the church rests on special revelation, special revelation rests on common revelation. A person is in the world before he enters the church. He must be persuaded that there is a God before he can entertain a special revelation from God. Theistic proofs naturally and logically precede Christian evidences. A person may believe that there is a God without believing in Christ. He cannot believe in Christ without believing in God (Joh_14:2). He must be persuaded that there is a God before he can be persuaded that Christ is the Son of God (Mat_16:16). Attempts to short-cut the route to Christianity by eliminating the theistic argument seem logically absurd, intellectually futile. Certainly many who have tried it have ended in a Death-of-God theology.
Special revelation itself confirms this. Its very opening verse reads “In the beginning God created. . . .” (Gen_1:1). The Bible assumes that men know God independently of the Bible. Gen_1:1 does not say how but only assumes that men know God independently of special revelation. Elsewhere the how is explained. Psa_19:1-14, for example, teaches, as noted, that “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” (Psa_19:1)
Does the Psalm imply that man “gets” the message? It says so expressly in Psa_19:3 : “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” Rom_1:20 : “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” Paul adds that men “knew God . . .” (Rom_1:21) The fact that men would not “retain ” the knowledge of God implies that they had it. *3* How can one refuse to retain what he does not possess? Edwards’ sermon-lecture on Rom_1:20, preached June, 1743 and again August, 1756, was: “The being and attributes of God are clearly seen by the works of creation.” *4*
Is this the common historic doctrine of the Christian church also?
2. The Early Church
In the early church period, I pass by the Apostolic Fathers of the first half of the second century whose interests were largely intramural and proceed to those later Christians whose orientation was more “Athenian” [though perhaps I may note in passing that Ignatius (d. 98/117) argued en route to Rome that his impending martyrdom itself proved the reality of Christ’s crucifixion]. *5*
Even the Apologists do not reveal our point with emphasis because the existence of God was generally accepted by their audiences. Still, they did build their evidences of Christianity on the known existence of God. The Apologists tended to assume theistic proofs because it was not so fashionable in the second, as in the twentieth, century to deny them.
The greatest of the Apologists was Justin Martyr (c. 110-c. 165), who was one of the first to argue the harmony of faith with reason. As with Augustine there was no rest for him until he found his rest in God. He visited the philosophical teachers of his day and was pleased with the philosophy of Plato who had classically stated theistic arguments. Knowing God, Justin found him as Savior in Christ. Justin recognized the “spermatic reason” (lovgo “spermatikov”) in all men. With that indigenous awareness of the divine being, the pagans were then confronted by Martyr with the prophecies and miracles certifying the Bible’s divine Christ. The following from his “First Apology” is a quite typical example of his rational revelational thinking.
Though we could bring forward many other prophesies, we forbear, judging these sufficient for the persuasion of those who have ears to hear and understand; and considering also that those persons who are able to see that we do not make mere assertions without being able to produce proof, like those fables that are told of the so-called sons of Jupiter. For with what reason should we believe of a crucified man that He is the first-born of the unbegotten God, and Himself will pass judgment on the whole human race, unless we had found testimonies concerning Him published before He came and was born as man, and unless we saw that things had happened accordingly - the devastation of the land of the Jews, and men of every race persuaded by His teaching through the apostles, and rejecting their old habits, in which, being deceived, they had had their conversation; yea, seeing ourselves too, and knowing that the Christians from among the Gentiles are both more numerous and more true than those from among the Jews and Samaritans? For all the other human races are called Gentiles by the Spirit of prophecy; but the Jewish and Samaritan races are called the tribe of Israel, and the house of Jacob. And the prophecy in which it was predicted that there should be more believers from the Gentiles than from the Jews and Samaritans, we will produce: it ran thus: “Rejoice, O barren, thou that doest not bear; break forth and shout , thou that dost not travail, because many more are the children of the desolate than of her that hath an husband.” For all the Gentiles were “desolate” of the true God, serving the works of their hands; but the Jews and Samaritans, having the word of God delivered to them by the prophets, and always expecting the Christ, did not recognize Him when He came, except some few, of whom the Spirit of prophecy by Isaiah had predicted that they should be saved. *6*
Justin died a martyr for the truth for which he lived. He had written apologies pleading for fair treatment of Christians not so much to save Christians from death (which he welcomed), as to save their persecutors from eternal death. “For your own sakes judge justly,” he pled with his executioners. He out-died, as he had out-thought, the pagans.
A little later Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, France, argues essentially the same way with the heathen combining Jesus’ miracles with prophecy and refuting criticisms:
If, however, they maintain that the Lord, too, performed such works simply in appearance, we shall refer them to the prophetical writings, and prove from these both that all things were thus predicted regarding Him, and did take place undoubtedly, and that He is the only Son of God. *7*
Probably no early group was more characteristic of intellectual Christianity during the first half of the third century than the Alexandrian school of Pantaenus (d. 190), Clement, (d. c. 215), and Origen, (d. 254). This school continued and developed the theistic tradition of Plato and the Apologists. Consider Clement of Alexandria:
Thus philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, until the coming of the Lord. And now it assists toward true religion as a kind of preparatory training for those who arrive at faith by way of demonstration. . . . For God is the source of all good things, of some primarily, as of the old and new Testaments; of others by consequence, as of philosophy. But it may be indeed that philosophy was given to the Greeks. For philosophy was a schoolmaster to bring the Greek mind to Christ, as the law brought the Hebrews. Thus philosophy was a preparation, paving the way towards perfection in Christ. *8*
Many scholars, especially Adolf von Harnack in his famous History of Dogma, have seen this rational development as “Hellenization,” an alien rational spirit corrupting the naive faith of original Judaism and early Christianity. The Jewish author, Robert M. Brechman, in his From Philo to Origen, offers an astute correction:
They [Philo and Origen] are based upon the conceptual systems which neither accepted as divinely sanctioned, and to which neither gave luminous expression. They were followers of Plato, the student of Moses and Christ. It was to this philosophical tradition that they turned in order to understand their experience and world. With these thinkers we enter into an inner world of movement and a struggle to understand the wisdom of God. In their writings the static act of acceptance is replaced by a movement of the understanding, in which there is no resting place short of final illumination, or gnosis. An energy meets us in their attempts to gain union with God.
Revelation has a metaphysical order to it, and a dialectical mode of expression. This urge toward a greater measure of knowledge ran like fire through this emerging vision of Judaism and Christianity. Philo was the founder of this ardent and effusive disclosure, but for the men of what would become Christian antiquity, at least in the Greek East, the patrons were preeminently Origen and his teacher Clement.
This power to think new thoughts is most impressive, and it was clearly more than the mere expression of the hellenization of Judaism and Christianity as many scholars have claimed. They arranged their thoughts in such a manner because they were certain that such an arrangement reflected the thinking of God. This power of Philo, Clement, and Origen to give a metaphysically coherent expression to human experience and divine revelation was a turning point for the history of western thought.
This union of philosophical learning and religious expression is something that became universal everywhere in Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity. *9*
Tertullian (c. 160-c. 220), at first glance, seems a glaring contradiction of the thesis that the Early Church honored the rational theistic approach to faith. At times he seemed to separate Athens from Jerusalem just as much as the Alexandrians tried to combine them:
[H]eresies are themselves prompted by philosophy. It is the source of ‘aeons,’ and I know not what infinite ‘forms’ and the ‘trinity of man’ in the system of Valentinus. He was a Platonist. It is the source of Marcion’s ‘better God,’ ‘better’ because of his tranquility. . . .’ Again, when it is said that the soul perishes, that opinion is taken from the Epicureans. The denial of the restoration of the flesh is taken over from the universal teaching of the philosophers. . . . Wretched Aristotle! who taught them dialectic, that art of building up and demolishing, so protean in statement, so far-fetched in conjecture, so unyielding in controversy, so productive of disputes; self-stultifying, since it is ever handling questions but never settling anything. . . . What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? What between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? . . . away with all projects for a ‘stoic,’ a ‘Platonic’ or a ‘dialectic’ Christianity! After Christ Jesus we desire no subtle theories, no acute inquiries after the gospel. . . . *10*
However, Tertullian opposes the abuse and not the use of philosophy. He is speaking of the philosophy of heretics. Valid philosophy after finding Christ sits at His feet. Tertullian does not oppose the theistic argumentation of philosophy. His Apology is a very astute “Case for Christianity.” Even his credibile est quia ineptum est is anything but irrational. If the infinite God of Tertullian were to reveal himself he would so transcend our understanding as to appear absurd. (We will see Edwards arguing the same reasonableness of a mysterious revelation). Apparent absurdity then becomes a kind of theistic proof in the fine rationality of Tertullian. The difference between Tertullian’s argument and the contemporary appeal to “paradox” will become clear as we proceed.
Tertullian used historical argument as well. His famous statement, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” and, indeed, the whole Apologeticum is evidential apologetics. In fact, in De Fuga in Persecutione, Tertullian makes enduring persecution a test of being a Christian. If a man is a coward, Christ’s perfect love which casts out fear is not in him. *11*
By far the most influential Christian theologian of the Early Church was Augustine (354-430). Unfortunately he has often been considered fideistic. Granted, Augustine began within, was the father of Descartes, (who beginning within moved out into the natural world), and the champion par excellence of direct illumination of the soul by God. But he also relied on the evidence of God from the natural order. That he was a master harmonizer of faith and reason this one statement alone, were it alone, would demonstrate:
If . . . it is rational that, with respect to some great concerns which we find ourselves unable to comprehend, faith should precede reason; there can be no question but that the amount of reason which leads us to accord this faith, whatever that amount may be, is itself anterior to faith. *12*
Speaking generally, Augustine waged battle against three major foes: the Manicheans, the Pelagians and the Donatists. It was against the ultimate dualism of the first especially that he argued the eternal existence of the one and only true God.
Though A.A. Simpson and others have correctly observed that Augustine’s profound sense of the limits of reason made authority important to him, *13* this was not at the expense of his independent, logical and metaphysical argument. D’Arcy neatly notes that Augustine was the first of the great converts who always remained thankful for his early education outside the faith. Again, while Augustine can be cited during his early days referring to “those impious men Plato and the Platonists or academics,” he never abandoned his essential Platonism and Henry Paolucci can remind us that “Neoplatonists . . . might no less fittingly be called Neo-Aristotelians. . . .” *14* Generally speaking:
The really remarkable feature here, and one that should be regarded as a stroke of genius, of Augustine’s holy genius, is the certainty of instinct, the supernatural tact with which, whilst remaining a Platonist and in strict dependence on Plotinus in philosophy, he avoids (the same cannot be said of all his disciples) the most dangerous pitfalls of Platonism: at one moment magnificently setting his Greek masters right (as when he constructs the world of divine Ideas out of the Platonic exemplars), at another leaving unresolved those questions to which the Platonic method does not supply a key (as, for instance, many questions about the soul and its origin), and at yet another leaving unfinished, in a state of pathetic, because expectant, uncertainty, in a state at once of promise and of reserve, certain great doctrines (such as his doctrine of Illumination) which, with such a method, he could not bring to a higher point of precision without the risk of falling into great error. *15*
The rational element in Augustine is most noticeable in the way he argues against the Manichees, not primarily by hurling biblical thunderbolts at them, but by a (not always) sweet reasonableness. In Against the Manichees, Section III he proves by argument that every body is from God. In Section IV he gives as proofs of the Catholic faith that “nature is made by God and corruption (evil) comes from nothing,” *16* later demonstrating *17* that corruption is “by God’s permission and comes from us” and that “true existence belongs to God alone.” *18* The genuineness of Matthew is argued *19* and the rationalism of Manicheeism is rationally refuted *20* and at the same time the weakness of reason in relation to God is proven by reason. *21*
In two recent volumes *22* Stephen Gersh illustrates our point. He cites Augustine’s De Diversis Quaestionibus LXXXIII, Q. 46: “‘It is Plato who is first said to have given the Ideas their name.’” Continuing, Augustine manifestly agrees with Plato saying:
(ic2) Ideas are certain primary forms or reasons of things, stable and immutable, which are themselves not formed and therefore eternal and always self-identical, and contained in the divine intellect . . . they themselves do not come into being or perish. . . .
(ic3) Furthermore, the soul cannot contemplate them unless it is rational. . . .
(iia) What man . . . would not confess, even if not yet capable of contemplating such things, that everything which exists . . . was made by God the creator. . . .
(iib) When this has been established and agreed, who would dare to say that God has made everything irrationally? And if that cannot truly be said or believed, it only remains that everything was made according to reason. . . .
(iic) And where could these reasons be thought to exist except in the very mind of the creator? *23*
Gersh notes in his comments that
section 1 a is a historical argument for the existence of the Ideas: all philosophers have understood that these exist although they have not applied a fixed terminology to them - this proof being expounded in a non-Christian context. On the other hand, section iia is a cosmological argument for the Ideas’ existence: any truly religious man reflecting on the existence, life, and order in the world will realize that it has been created according to reason - this proof being expressed in primarily Christian terms. *24*
Gersh’s footnotes are as interesting as the text:
7. The notion that one can deduce a philosophical truth from the universally held beliefs of mankind is Stoic in origin. Augustine could have found it in texts like Cicero: De Nat. Deor. II, 5 - where the existence of the gods is demonstrated - and Cicero: Tusc. Disp I, 36 - where it is the soul’s survival after death which is shown.
8. The notion that one can argue from a characteristic of the microcosm is also Stoic in origin. Augustine could have found this in texts like Cicero: De Leg. II, 16 - where the characteristic is the presence of rationality. That Augustine’s use of the argument from microcosm to macrocosm is peculiarly Christian is shown by (i) the reference to the man ‘imbued with the true religion’ and (ii) the implicitly Trinitarian reference to God as the source of existence, life, and order in section iia. *25*
Before we leave Augustine I note that he argued that the spread of Christianity did for “us” what miracles did for the early church, *26* but reminded his church that charity was more desirable than the ability to do miracles. *27*
3. The Medieval Church
The “Greek classical” intellectual base which we have seen not to be alien to the Bible, continued after Augustine as the foundation of Christian revelationism. Tertullian’s Apologetics, for example, appears frequently in medieval libraries. *28* Before Aquinas *29* this tendency is apparent in Anselm, (1033-1109), especially in his Proslogion where he develops his famous ontological argument. His credo ut intelligam is often construed as: “faith (is) the precondition of the right use of reason . . . but it yet remains our duty, so far as we can, to exercise our minds on the apprehension of revealed truth.” This is essentially Karl Barth’s interpretation in Fides Quaerens Intellectum. *30*
This fideistic interpretation of Anselm is incorrect for several reasons. First, it would make his thinking mere begging of the question. A thing is presumed to be proven by faith before the cognitive process begins. Second, it is absurd to suppose that faith can precede reason; for faith must have a rationally conceived object in which to have faith. Third, the Proslogion, although the writing of a prayerful believer, does not in fact assume the thing to be proven. By argumentation it reaches a rational conclusion. Fourth, in the history of the ontological argument it is treated as an argument and argued for or against. Fifth, after all “Fides Quaerens Intellectum” is not “Fides Quaerens Argumentum.” Faith is seeking understanding of its object, not the justification of its existence. Even if it were seeking the argument for its existence, that shows faith does not rest until if and when it finds rational justification. As Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson have noted:
In the Monologion he [Anselm] ambitiously undertakes to prove - by rational reflection alone, without recourse to the authority of Scripture - that God exists and is consistently triune. *31*
If anything would appear more inappropriate than seeing Anselm as a fideist it would be seeing Aquinas (1224-1274) as one. But one interpreter compared the great scholastic, theistic theologian to an attorney who knows in advance that a certain criminal is guilty and seeks only a way to prove it. Once again we have the obliteration of the all-important distinction between a man who is a believer as he thinks and one who thinks as a believer. Aquinas is a believer as he thinks but he does not think as a believer when writing apologetics in his great Summa Theologica; even less in Summa contra Gentiles, (as Chesterton, Maritain and Gilson to mention only a few, have demonstrated).
According to Aquinas, the general truths of God’s existence and eternity, may be discovered and proven by natural reason independent of special revelation. Summa Contra Gentiles is his great Summa for this. The “Five Ways” of his Summa Theologica is his famous articulation of the a posteriori, theistic proofs. *32* His Contra Gentiles was written for missionaries providing them with arguments for Muslims who they were trying to win to the Christian faith.
It may seem that in Thomas’ Summa Theologica (where he presents revealed truths such as the Trinity and Incarnation as matters of faith beyond reason), he must be fideistic. Yet he gives reasons for faith in revelation also. Revealed truths cannot be discovered by reason alone as can the natural truths. However, there is evidence for revelation. He shows that it is reasonable to believe these truths which transcend the reach of reason.
Aquinas’s great contemporary, Bonaventura (1221-74) was rational also in a more explicitly Augustinian way. Later scholasticism departed from the mainline rational path. It attempted to revoke the priority of reason and give that role to will. Anticipated by Abelard, (1079-1142), developed somewhat by Duns Scotus, (c. 1264-1308), this tendency reaches its climax in William of Occam, (d. c. 1349), whom we briefly consider. Scotus dropped Aquinas’s “five ways.” Occam's extreme nominalism went further making proof of God impossible. Knowledge, (scientia), he contended, dealt only with abstraction. Abstractions (universals) do not exist - only individuals. Intention is the way of true knowledge and this spells subjectivity. This Kierkegaard of the Middle Ages was as much out of step with his time as the Dane was with his - almost. The non-canonization of these able and influential theologians was owing partly, at least, to their anti-intellectualism.
Karl Barth’s “reverent agnosticism” *33* could have described William six hundred years earlier. Thinking that there is no true knowledge of God possible, Occam claimed to accept church tradition just as Barth did later in Church Dogmatics. The church did not acknowledge this fideism of the medieval “invincible doctor” nor of the “irrefutable doctor” (Duns Scotus). She sensed that arbitrary acceptance of her teaching would ultimately, not enhance, but undermine it. As Archbishop Trench well observed about these later medieval “Knights Errants”:
the Schoolmen were not Reformers; they were and always had been defenders of that which was. Every attempt to revive the higher life of the Church, to abate mischiefs which were impending, which indeed had gone very far to strangle that life, found the most determined opposition from them. I ventured to call them in a former Lecture the Knights Errants of the Medieval Theology, holding the lists against all comers. This, which once and contemplated from one point of view was their glory, was what now discredited, and justly discredited them the most. There was nothing which if it formed part of the Church’s accepted system, they had not at all times shown themselves ready to defend; - the most baseless pretension, the grossest superstition, the abuse which was the mushroom growth of yesterday equally with the truth which had been once delivered to the saints. The withdrawal of the cup from the laity; transubstantiation, simony if practised by a Pope; purgatory; indulgences; the burning of heretics; and what besides, - abusing their dialectic dexterity, they found reasons, and, in some sort of fashion, Scripture for all. With all their questioning, with all their affection of independence, they never questioned any point, small or great, which the Church had determined; or only questioned with a foregone purpose of setting it on a securer basis than ever, rearing some new buttress with which to strengthen it; for their fortunes, and the fortunes of the Church as it was, they felt to be bound up together, and that the overthrow of either would be the overthrow of both. *34*
4. The Reformation
While the church through the Middle Ages was giving her “Rational Account of the Christian Religion” it was the Reformation’s doctrinal milieu that was more immediately Edwards’. Occamite nominalism brings us chronologically and logically to Luther and the Reformation. It is possible that had there been no Occam, Luther, (1483-1546), would not have occurred. The Reformer called William his liebster Meister and showed the effects of Occam’s ethical and eucharistic thinking. More important, it was the nominalist’s separation of reason and faith that enabled Luther to break the bonds of the approved scholastic system of salvation which held him, he felt, in theological chains.
It seems that exegesis brought Luther’s awakening, (Turmerlebnis), sometime before 1513. He had studied under nominalists at Erfurt and Wittenberg, but it was Bible studies, especially of Isa_28:21, Eze_33:11 and Rom_1:17, that occasioned the evangelical insight. Others, however, had had evangelical insights who had not gone on to Reformation. Why did Luther? It would appear to be traceable to his almost simultaneous break with orthodox scholasticism. Christmas of 1514 he preached his last speculative scholastic sermon. His sermons on the Decalogue, beginning in 1516 and continuing to February 24, 1517, were directed against scholasticism. In July came his first sermon against the scholastic doctrine of indulgences. On September 14 of the same eventful year 1517 was his first disputation in which he made the shocking statement: “Error est dicere: sine Aristotele non fit theologus; immo theologus non fit, nisi id fiat sine Aristotele,” *35* indicating a radical break with the Aristotle-Scholasticism synthesis. A month and a half before the posting of the “95 Theses” which began the Reformation, the Reformer himself had been born of evangelical insight that was not dead-on-arrival, thanks to William of Occam. Otherwise, Luther may have felt constrained to renounce that insight.
While we grant - in fact, insist - that Luther and the Reformation were launched with a non-rational, fideistic push, *36* they soon sailed under the traditional reason-faith synthesis. The German Reformation in this respect, (a bad beginning followed by a good course), is not unlike the English Reformation which began with Henry VIII’s lust but soon went on under its true moral colors.
In spite of Luther’s 1517 denunciation of Aristotle, and some subsequent ones, his basic position clearly came to be a harmonization of faith and reason. First, concerning Aristotle himself, Luther acknowledges the Greek’s value for politics, rhetoric, and the like. Second, his real objection to Aristotle, the philosopher, is guilt by association with the scholastic system of grace to which Luther was intransigently opposed. Third, Luther’s chief lieutenant, Philip Melanchthon, in his Loci Communes, from the first edition in 1521, used theistic proofs. It seemed unlikely to Paul Tillich *37* that Melanchthon could or would have done this without Luther’s tacit approval. Most important of all is Luther’s own profound rationalism at the Marburg Colloquy, even when he appears to have exhibited what O. Ritschl has called an “irrationalistische Weltanschauung,” speaking of the Reformer’s doctrine of justification and predestination. *38*
What is said of Luther is still more evidently true of the other great Reformers. No one questions this of Ulrich Zwingli, the most “humanistic” of all. We believe that scholars should never have doubted it in John Calvin either. Were it not for false deductions from his doctrine of the “Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit” and a few infelicitous expressions which Calvin himself makes, they probably never would have done so. The Genevan maintains that there is no saving knowledge of God except for those enlightened by the Word and Spirit. *39* All knowledge apart from that, however true, is vain. It is a sad error to attribute to Calvin a denial of any and all knowledge of God apart from the testimony of the Spirit. Men “know” God (non-savingly) by the seed of religion in each, by the creation and government of the world, etc. ** Calvin follows the traditional apologetic path even to citing classic Cicero.
5. The Age of Orthodoxy
Seventeenth century Lutheran and Reformed Orthodoxy developed and systematized the Reformers it so greatly admired. This is quite evident in the area of natural theology.
Lutheran Orthodoxy, following Melanchton’s Loci Communes began systematic theological works with natural theology. Musaeus, Introductio in Theologiam (1679), writes typically: “God, through the guidance of the light of nature, is known by two different ways; first, through innate knowledge, and then through acquired.” *41* An objection is then considered: no one now comes to God by natural revelation. The answer? Natural revelation, sufficient in the Garden to bring Adam to God, is not now sufficient because of the fall and sin. Nevertheless, Musaeus concludes, natural theology is still necessary and is not essentially different from special revelation - “all difference between them concerns only degree.” The last of the Lutheran scholastics, David Hollaz, says the same thing: “The natural knowledge of God considered in itself is true as well regarding principles as conclusions which can be deduced from the principles.” Because of sin, however, “in relation to salvation [it is] nothing. . . .” *42*
What was true of Lutheran Orthodoxy was true of Orthodoxy in general: Reformed, Roman, and Eastern. Reformed Orthodoxy, for example, took essentially the same position as can easily be seen in Heinrich Heppe’s Reformed Dogmatics. *43* Edwards considered these men, especially Turretin the ablest polemical and Van Mastricht the ablest practical, Reformed theologians. *44* The reason-faith synthesis continued into later eras also among the reformed sons of the Reformation.
Princeton Theological Seminary in the century after Edwards was the mightiest institutional champion of Reformed orthodoxy. It was an advocate of traditional theism and its proofs. A number of recent studies of the rise of this theology at the beginning of the nineteenth century, *45* and the school’s demise as such a bastion in the beginning of the twentieth (with the passing of B. B. Warfield who died there, and J. G. Machen who left in protest against Princeton’s new stance) *46* show this. Archibald Alexander was Princeton Seminary’s founding father whose A Brief Outline of the Evidence of the Christian Religion *47* represent the traditional approach. Charles Hodge, Princeton’s most famous theologian, devotes very many pages of his three-volume magnum opus, Systematic Theology, *48* to the proofs. Casper Wistar, the last of the Hodges and perhaps the most philosophical, wrote on “The Kantian Epistemology and Theism,” endorsing what he considered the German’s powerful argument for God and tries to show that Kant’s epistemological position fails to invalidate the theistic proofs because of its own internal inconsistencies and its overlooking of the fact that the real must be rational.
B. B. Warfield, whom some consider the greatest of the apologists at Old Princeton, wrote much on this subject. He maintained of general and specific revelation:
[E]ach is incomplete without the other. Without general revelation, special revelation would lack that basis in the fundamental knowledge of God as the mighty and wise, righteous and good, maker and ruler of all things, apart from which further revelation of this great God’s intervention in the world for the salvation of sinners could not be either intelligible, credible or operative. *49*
Not only the Princeton Calvinists were in the classic tradition but also most of their non-Calvinist contemporaries. A striking illustration is C. G. Finney who was not merely uncalvinistic but anti-Princeton. His answer to “What is implied in evangelical faith?” is:
It implies an intellectual perception of the things, facts, and truths believed. No one can believe that which he does not understand. It is impossible to believe that which is not so revealed to the mind, that the mind understands it. It has been erroneously assumed, that faith did not need light, that is, that it is not essential to faith that we understand the doctrines of facts that we are called upon to believe. This is a false assumption; for how can we believe, trust, confide, in what we do not understand? I must first understand what a proposition, a fact, a doctrine, or a thing is, before I can say whether I believe, or whether I ought to believe or not. *50*
Finney out-did his opponents in the area of theistic proofs. Not only did he advance the traditional arguments for God but taught that they could effectively persuade even fallen men, who could not resist these demonstrations.
Incidentally, Eastern and Roman Orthodoxy were also classic. John of Damascus has remained the Aquinas of the East. Pope Leo XIII declared Aquinas the teacher of his church and Pius IX in 1846 in his encyclical Qui Pluribus asserted:
Even if faith is above reason, nevertheless, no true dissension or disagreement can ever be found between them, since both have their origin from one and the same font of immutable, eternal truth, the excellent and great God, and they mutually help one another so much that right reason demonstrates the truth of faith, protects it, defends it, but faith frees reason from all errors and, by a knowledge of divine things, wonderfully elucidates it, confirms, and perfects it. *51*
We have attempted to show historically that the classic Christian view accepts and advocates theistic proofs. This is not to say that this view has been universally held by all Christians at all times, past and present. Henry Dodwell, Jr. was not the only Protestant who would say Christianity Not Founded on Argument (1740). Nor is Karl Barth alone in thinking that what is philosophical is not Christian and what is Christian is not philosophical, for Pascal (1623-1662), long before Kierkegaard, insisted that the God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We do not deny these views have been held, but assert that Jonathan Edwards is in step with the historical Christian consensus favoring the synthesis of reason and faith. Even more so - more deeply so. But he was so, as we shall see, in his own unique way.
6. British Empiricism and Jonathan Edwards
It is clear that British Empiricism was part of the great Christian synthesis at least until David Hume came along. Locke was an Anglican churchman, Berkeley an Anglican bishop, Reid a Presbyterian clergyman and Edwards a Congregational minister. All of them were more or less orthodox and all of them offered a reasonable argument for Christianity. Hume was the black sheep of Locke’s little flock.
While Locke was the father of the empirical school, his offspring bore little family resemblance. His fundamental thesis was that there was nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses (Nihil in intellectu non fuerit in sensu). No sooner did his disciples call him father in that respect than they immediately left home. Locke had said that he did not know what was behind all those things that were apprehended through the senses. Bishop Berkeley said that the perceiving itself is the being. For Reid this was nonsense and the very “idea” was unreal since the object itself was immediately apprehended in the judgment. When Locke said the beyond is “I know not what,” Edwards virtually replied: “I will tell you. It is God.” But, for Hume, the impressions were all that could be known.
We are especially interested in Edwards. Edwards was beyond Locke whether he “discovered” him during his second year in College or in graduate school. The first part of his Notes on Science (Natural Philosophy) began with a recognition of the eternal, infinite, unchanging One. God was a necessary being. Nothing was nothing. Locke during his lifetime never got beyond pointing in this direction.
If this be so, why did Locke mean so much to Edwards who could have been Locke’s teacher? It would seem that Locke explained the process by which Edwards could see what he saw and Locke could not see. It is as if Edwards had been delightedly scanning the heavens through a telescope and Locke came along and explained how the telescope worked.
As Mattoon Monroe Curtis has written:
It has uniformly been assumed that the method of Edwards was the theological and deductive; that he starts out with the traditional arbitrary conception of God and deduces Cosmology, and Anthropology. Nothing could be farther from the truth. . . . *52*
How correct Curtis is can be seen clearly in Edwards’ programmatic statement in Freedom of the Will:
We first ascend, and prove a posteriori, or from effects, that there must be an eternal cause; and then secondly, prove by argumentation, not intuition, that this being must be necessarily existent; and then thirdly, from the proved necessity of his existence, we may descend, and prove many of his perfections a priori. *53*
Edwards does deduce but only after he has induced. The understanding began with sensation, used imagination, stored in memory and made judgments. “Edwards had apparently come very early to the conclusion that all the activities of the mind designated by the term understanding depended upon sensation.” *54* His statement in The Mind (Number 8) that we must deduce human nature from the divine nature, or being in general, is not inconsistent because he induces God’s eternal existence from the observation, a posteriori, of the things that are and then deduces His attributes a priori, in the light of which he sees human attributes.
It is not a matter of Edwards the philosopher proceeding inductively and Edwards the theologian proceeding deductively. He is inductive and deductive as philosopher and as theologian - in that order in both roles. In natural theology he moves from the effects to the eternal cause, God. In revealed theology he moves from the effects in Scripture to its inspiration by the eternal God. Once he has learned of God by induction he learns much more by deduction. Once he learns of the Bible’s inspiration by induction he learns much more by deduction (exegesis).
Some maintain that Edwards, like Plato, once securing this metaphysical result, theological interests fill his mind, and he proceeds deductively. This is probably not true of Edwards in science or theology. Concerned as he is with theology, it is not that fact, but the facts of mental life that make him proceed deductively once the fundamental principles are apprehended inductively. Curtis in the same essay remarks:
Thus, seeking to sustain the position that the First Principle of all things is an Intelligent, willing Agent, he gives reasons for supposing that man’s soul is the image of that First Principle. ‘It is only the soul of man,’ he remarks, ‘that does as the Supreme Principle does; that has a principle of action, has a power of action in itself, as that First Principle has. . . .’
Locke had opened the door but it was Berkeley and Edwards who had walked in before Reid attempted to close the door again, and Hume slammed it shut.
There is now no real doubt but that Berkeley and Edwards were independent students of Locke. At the beginning of this century the major debate in early American philosophy was how Edwards came by his idealism. Berkeley was felt by many to be the source. As Wallace Anderson, Norman Fiering and many others have since demonstrated that theory is utterly untenable.
First, there is no evidence that Edwards could have read Berkeley before he developed his own theory. Second, his views actually have very little in common with Berkeley, that are, not found in Plato. Apart from the ideational character of perception, Edwards, no doubt, learned not from Berkeley but from Locke from whom Berkeley probably learned it also. Thomas Reid was pointing out to the contemporaries of Locke that Locke was the one who had led philosophical Israel to sin. It was Locke’s doctrine of ideas that had led to Berkeley’s idealism from which the master had shied away and then to the skepticism of Hume who shied away from nothing.
Reid sees not Berkeley but Hume as the logical dead-end of Locke’s theory. Locke had believed that ideas were the liaison between body and mind. Berkeley had questioned any body behind the ideas and Hume had denied any mind before them, as well. Reid saw the ideas themselves as the bête noir. The only way to avoid Hume’s dead-end was to avoid Locke’s ideational start. Reid, to change the figure, cut the epistemological Gordian knot and began afresh with common sense.
Yet Reid in his simplicity is really more sophisticated than either Locke or Hume. He appeals to a common sense beginning of the epistemological process. In the beginning, the common sense of mankind finds not a simple perception but a judgment. The perceptions and ideas that may come later are abstractions from the original experience. The judgment which is at the end of the Lockean and Edwardsian epistemological process is at the beginning of Reid’s. Thus Reid’s common sense is more sophisticated than the philosophical subtlety of a Locke or Hume because it begins where they arrive and their arrival is by Reid shown to be not simple but developed thought. As G. A. Johnston has well observed:
Reid is far from consistent in maintaining the distinction between perception and sensation; but in the main he holds that while sensation is the condition of perception, yet bare perception by itself neither is an object of knowledge nor can give complete knowledge of an object. *55*
For Thomas Reid ideas are the figment of the philosophical imagination and the source of all its subsequent errors, for nothing can be done against Common Sense:
[N]o solid proof has even been advanced of the existence of ideas; that they are a mere fiction and hypothesis, contrived to solve the phenomena of human understanding; that they do not at all answer this end; and that this hypothesis of ideas or images of things in the mind, or in the sensorium, is the parent of those many paradoxes so shocking to common sense, and of that skepticism which disgrace our philosophy of the mind, and have brought upon it the ridicule and contempt of sensible men. *56*
Reid’s inquiry into the human mind finds that “apprehension, accompanied with belief and knowledge, must go before simple apprehension. . . .” With a direct attack on Locke he continues:
[I]nstead of saying that the belief or knowledge is got by putting together and comparing the simple apprehension, we ought rather to say that the simple apprehension is performed by resolving and analyzing a natural and original judgment. *57*
In Section 6 Reid takes particular aim at Hume: “APOLOGY FOR METAPHYSICAL ABSURDITIES - SENSATION WITHOUT A SENTIENT, A CONSEQUENCE OF THE THEORY OF IDEAS - CONSEQUENCES OF THIS STRANGE OPINION.” At the outset, he concedes to Hume that he, Reid, cannot prove that there cannot be sensation without a sentient being, “and that to pretend to prove it, seems to me almost as absurd as to deny it.” *58* Until Hume came along no one ever questioned the proposition. But Reid has great respect for Hume’s critical powers and the value of many of his observations. Hume made a case which, though absurd, is deserving of serious consideration and refutation, and refutation is just what Reid intends to provide. In one sentence we have a precise summary of Thomas Reid and Common Sense philosophy:
If there are certain principles as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and of which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them - these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd. *59*
Reid grants that Hume’s position is closely associated with the theory of ideas. If that theory is accepted Reid sees no way that Hume can be refuted. In a statement reminiscent of an Edwards remark that the fundamental convictions of thought are all mystery and apparent contradiction, Reid writes:
For, if impressions and ideas are the only objects of thought, then heaven and earth, the body and spirit, and everything you please, must signify only impressions and ideas, or they must be words without any meaning. *60*
In a charming touché he makes this allusion to Hume that could have been aimed at Edwards:
It seemed very natural to think that the Treatise of Human Nature required an author, and a very ingenious one too; but now we learn that it is only a set of ideas which came together and arranged themselves by certain association and attractions. *61*
This incidentally shows that Reid is not simply taking common sense on faith - not if reductio ad absurdum can be considered an argument against its alternative. On the other hand, there can be no doubting that what impresses Reid most is not the absurdity of the alternative but the compelling character of Common Sense itself: “[T]his sensation suggests to us both a faculty and a mind; and not only suggests the notion of them, but creates a belief of their existence. . . .” Judgments, he continues, are “not got by comparing ideas, and perceiving agreements and disagreements, but immediately inspired by our constitution” and it is impossible “to shake off” these convictions of common sense (which, incidentally, is another argument for them). If one cannot avoid them they must be believed. In that case, nothing could be more rational than to believe such common sense judgments. Again, when Reid finds a constant conjunction between the rose and a certain odor then “the mind is at rest, without inquiring whether this conjunction is owing to a real efficiency or not; that being a philosophical inquiry, which does not concern human life.” *62*
But how does the judgment of cause come about? Not by induction but by a conviction of common sense:
A train of events following one another ever so regularly, could never lead us to the notion of a cause if we had not, from our constitution, a conviction of the necessity of a cause to every event.
And of the manner in which a cause may exert its active power, we can have no conception, but from consciousness of the manner in which our active power is exerted. Every man is led by nature to attribute to himself the free determinations of his own will, and to believe those events to be in his power which depend upon his will. On the other hand, it is self-evident, that nothing is in our power that is not subject to our will. *63*
The question rarely raised, and yet quite pertinent, is what was Edwards’ relation to Scottish Common Sense Philosophy. “Common Sense” plays a large role in the thought of Edwards. It is, for example, the most fundamental argument in his most fundamental work, The Freedom of the Will. The principle of causality is that on which Edwards’ whole argument there mainly rests. And causality rests primarily on “common sense.” The crucial section three of the second part is entitled: “Whether Any Event Whatsoever, and Volition in Particular, Can Come to Pass Without a Cause of its Existence.” Edwards’ argument is that Arminianism is to be rejected fundamentally because it conceives of volitions in such a way as to violate the law of causality. Arminian volitions are represented as uncaused events. This view of volitions cannot be, Edwards maintains, because it violates “this grand principle of common sense.”
Edwards recognizes that the Arminians, (whether he believed that Thomas Reid was an Arminian or not), constantly appeal to the common sense of mankind in support of their own position. He states, in fact, that common sense is the only real argument that they seem to have. He as much as admits that if common sense were on their side his own argument would be lost. Common sense, he argues, is not on their side. It only appears to be so because the Arminians state the matter in a misleading way. They rightly represent common sense as opposed to any moral culpability for natural necessity failing to notice that the Calvinistic necessity under discussion here is not a natural but moral necessity. To moral necessity, common sense is in no way opposed. In fact, Edwards will show by many illustrations that common sense always condemns a person who is morally unable to do good. The more he is unable, in the moral sense, the more common sense condemns, while it never condemns for natural ability. *64*
Why then is Jonathan Edwards so strongly for ideas and common sense at the same time? According to Reidian views of common sense it is antithetical to ideas. Common sense was Reid's main argument against John Locke besides the point that Locke’s ideas ended in hopeless paradox. Edwards, more than Locke, seemed to see this point. For example, note how devastating is Edwards’ critique of ideas when he is showing the Deists that reason is no substitute for revelation. On the very subject of the mind itself, ideas are fatal:
Even the very existence of a sensible world, which we receive for certain from the testimony of our senses, is attended with difficulties and seeming inconsistencies with reason, which are insuperable by the reason at least of most men. For if there be a sensible world, that world either exists in the mind only or out of the mind, and independent of its imagination or perception. If the latter, then that sensible world is some material substance, altogether diverse from all the ideas we have by any of our senses, [as that of] color or visible extension and figure (which is nothing but the quantity of color) and its various limitations (which are sensible qualities which we have by sight); and also diverse from any of the sensible qualities we have by other sense, as that [of] solidity (which is an idea we have by feeling), and that [of] extension and figure (which is only the quantity and limitation of those), and so of all other qualities. But that there should be any substance entirely distinct from any or all of those is utterly inconceivable. For if we exclude all color, solidity, or conceivable extension, dimension, and figure, what is there left that we can conceive of? Is there not a removal in our minds of all existence and a perfect emptiness of everything? But if it be said that the sensible world has not existence but only in the mind, then the sensations themselves, or the organs of sense by which sensible ideas are let into the mind, have no existence but only in the mind. And those organs of sense have no existence but what is conveyed into the mind by themselves, for they are a part of the sensible world. And then it would follow that the organs of sense owe their existence to the organs of sense, and so are prior to them, being the cause or occasions of their own existence - which is a seeming inconsistency with reason, which I imagine, the reason of all men cannot explain and remove. *65*
Does Edwards here not refute his own idealism and call upon common sense to save the epistemological day without seeming to realize it? I think not. What he is doing in this Miscellany is attack Tindal’s principle that “reason without revelation or undirected by revelation must be the judge concerning each doctrine and proposition contained in that pretended revelation. . . .” Edwards’ point is that such a procedure was unreasonable because “numberless truths are known only by consequence from that general proposition that the testimony of our senses may be depended upon.” *66* He appeals to the same three areas where general propositions are the basis of the acceptance of innumerable derivative truths - the testimony of the senses, memory, and the “experience” of mankind - to which Reid appeals. *67*
As a refutation of Tindal, Edwards’ argument is convincing enough, but how does he fare in relation to Reid? He seems to escape the Deistic lion only to run into the arms of the Realistic bear. First of all, he gives a devastating critique of his own idealism. Edwards reduces Edwards to absurdity by showing that if the sense organ is mere idea it is before itself. To be sure, he has also reduced a naive realism to absurdity at the same time, by showing that the objects supposedly “out there” are quite different from those in the mind. In any case that critique does not help Edwards’ own predicament but is merely a tu quoque argument. He does not seem to notice this. We suppose it is because of his preoccupation with his successful refutation of Tindal. Like Samson, he is destroying the Philistines and himself at the same time. But does he destroy Reid as well? Hardly; because, as we have seen, Reid does not find perception beginning with the single sensation but with a judgment from which the single apprehension is abstracted. With such a view he would be left standing while Tindal and Edwards are in ruins all around him. Common sense may fall but not by this argument. Furthermore and in any case, Reid is no more naive than Edwards here. Both would be accepting the testimony of the senses at face value without being able to prove their reliability. Tindal, Edwards, and Reid all rely on the senses at the outset. Tindal, however, will not accept their testimony unless it is proven by reason and Edwards and Reid eliminate Tindal at that point. But then Edwards eliminates himself by his own analysis of the ideas that he supposes come by the reliable senses. This leaves only Reid standing, apparently.
Whatever the outcome of this British epistemological battle, the historic synthesis stood for all the combatants - except Hume. We have entered into the debate to show how intense and significant the differences could be among the disputants even while they agreed that there could be a “Rational Account of the Christian Religion.” While Berkeley, Reid, and Edwards alike were all Christian apologists, it was Locke who wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity. *68*
In the next chapter we resume and conclude our survey of the classical synthesis. Beginning with the period just after Edwards’ death in 1758, we will consider the breakdown of the classical Christian synthesis through the influence of Kant’s “Copernican Revolution. We conclude with a discussion of the way some contemporary Christian theologians have been trying to put the pieces back together again, while others appear either to have forgotten what the pieces were for in the first place, or to take offense at the very idea of such a re-building - noting that the whole project might be better pursued with the help of Jonathan Edwards.