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TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 04 Epistemology and Metaphysics
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Wallace Anderson after a very careful study of Edwards’ epistemology comes to a conclusion about his metaphysics. He obviously sees Edwards as one of those thinkers who begins with epistemology and moves to metaphysics rather than vice versa. In that I think he is quite correct. Edwards does not assume his metaphysics. He tends to derive it from his analysis of the knowing process. We have already noticed that he follows a somewhat Lockean way of knowing but shows a very great divergence from Locke when it comes to the metaphysical deductions from epistemology. Where Locke threw in the intellectual towel and claimed not to know what was behind the object known Edwards was rather confident of what was behind the object known. Where Locke says “I do not know what,” Edwards felt that he did know what or rather who was behind all objects known. There are two stages in this development. The first is a rejection of materialism and the second the development of his idealism. *1* But he moves in a very careful way to his metaphysical conclusions. There is no jumping to a sure affirmation that substance lies behind and that the substance is God. That, to be sure, is the conclusion to which Edwards moves, but very gradually.
Continuing with Locke, Edwards agrees that the idea produced is not in the thing which produced it. He agrees that there is no pain in the needle that produces pain. The question for Edwards is what is in the needle? The needle was or is something. The question is what. For Edwards it is basically resistance. It is the needle's resistance to pressure which is the occasion for the feeling of pain. Resistance is also the ultimate cause of figure, shape, and every other sensory experience for Edwards. *2*
But when we ask Edwards where that resistance originates he is driven to another conclusion. It is not in the needle itself because the needle itself does not continue to exist of itself so as to have a power to reproduce itself or to resist any other object. There is a power behind the needle just as there is a power behind every other object which produces resistance and the sensory effects that follow. That power in Edwards’ mind is a self-existent, independent, eternal power: God. It could produce no effects if it did not itself exist independently of all effects. *3*
This leads Edwards to say *4* near the very end of his life that there is “nothing more certain than that there must be an unmade and unlimited being.” *5* In a sense that is exactly what he said at the very beginning of his intellectual odyssey. In “Of Being,” written no doubt while he was still at college, he maintained that there must be eternal being because “nothing” is unthinkable. That is, eternal being has no disjunction. There is either eternal being or eternal being and nothing which is the same thing. *6*
Anderson astutely observes that Edwards had made an early advance in “Of Being.” Anderson, however, tends to neglect the observation that Edwards was continuing to maintain the principle in “Of Being” when he went on to observe that that which exists must be known. For Anderson that is a distinctive emphasis in Edwards. That kind of idealism, among other things, sets Edwards off from Berkeley. *7* Though Berkeley himself maintained that “to be is to be perceived” Anderson sees Edwards as making that point more vigorously than the Irish bishop. According to Anderson virtually all that Berkeley is concerned with is the denial of materialism. He wanted to deny that because he felt that if one ever admitted the existence of matter there would be no way of proving that matter was not eternal and the source of all things. So the bishop was determined to deny matter and did indeed do that by his type of idealism. But Anderson feels that Edwards has gone deeper in this path than Berkeley in seeing that mind must be the ultimate reality and source of all material reality.
We have some question about Anderson at this point but it is not essential to our present concern with Edwards’ views. There seems no doubt that Edwards is idealistic and sees ultimate reality in terms of non-material idea and goes on to maintain that nothing could exist without being known by the mind.
When, however, Anderson defines Edwards’ metaphysical position as “empirical phenomenalism” we are puzzled. *8* Anderson uses the term without any elaboration and one is left to assume that he means by the expression “phenomenalism” the usual meaning of the word. Phenomena are usually contrasted with noumena. They are that which appear distinguished from that which is in itself. Not only is that the language of Kant but of most philosophers including Hegel in his Phenomenology of the Mind. There he means manifestations of the mind, appearances of the mind, though he comes to the ultimate conclusion that these manifestations are indeed the mind itself and that the mind and its manifestations are essentially identical.
It seems to me that Edwards certainly is not a phenomenologist in the sense that he believes the ultimate being, as known to us, is merely appearance, or that all we know are phenomena. He believes that we know ultimate reality. Edwards is certainly idealistic but he would appear to be just as certainly not phenomenalistic. If one had to describe Edwards’ metaphysics in this type of terminology he would, it seems to me, have to say that Edwards is an idealistic noumenalist. That is, so far from being a materialist who reduces all reality to matter, Edwards is an idealist who reduces all appearance to idea or the ideal. Since he arrives here beginning with sensory data we may say Edwards is a sensational, idealistic, noumenalist. *9*
For Edwards, being is clearly substance and not merely appearance. Here again Anderson is surprising. When comparing Locke and Edwards he says that neither is interested in substance and the like, but that is precisely what does interest Edwards. It is true that Edwards did not use that word as much as the terms “being” and “excellence,” but in more than one of his sermons he mentions that God is a substance and even uses the medieval language actus purus. What may mislead is that Edwards is usually also talking about the appearances or shadows. However, things are beings which do not exist of themselves but are “emanations” of Being in general.
Another obvious point is nevertheless important. It is especially important for professional philosophers to remember. Edwards was a Christian Calvinistic theologian as every one knows. He could never have gained that reputation by believing that God was not the only unchangeable being. Edwards shows as a matter of fact in his voluminous writings that he did maintain that doctrine. Of course, it is possible that he was inconsistent in his philosophy and theology. Woodbridge Riley thought that Edwards could not stand the strain when it led him in other than the theistic direction and Bertrand Russell and others have always contended that if a theist is going to be consistent he must become either atheist or pantheist. Even Edwards himself at one point seems to agree, maintaining that apart from revelation all thinkers would probably be Spinozists. I will discuss this below.
Admittedly it is possible that Edwards is inconsistent. I do not think that is the case here. One cannot simply casually assume an incompatibility of Edwards’ philosophy and theology. Edwards was confident that sound philosophy and theology cohere. He is orthodox, not neo-orthodox, being very conscious of the importance of consistency. Therefore, alleged gross inconsistency at the very foundation of his thinking must be demonstrated. Furthermore, what reason is there to assume that simply because Edwards speaks often of shadows, images, and appearances that he therefore does not believe the substantial being that Christianity calls God, behind or in these emanations?
Nevertheless, there is a problem concerning the relation between the reality and the appearances. There is a question about these manifestations and their source. Jonathan Edwards believed in natural theology yet seems not to do so.
In his 1743 MS sermon-lecture on Rom_1:20 he maintained that a blade of grass is overwhelming evidence of God. In Freedom of the Will there is no question in his mind that we proceed a posteriori to see that there is an eternal cause, by argumentation to see that that cause is necessary, and then a priori to prove many of its attributes. Again, “nothing is more certain than that there is an unmade and unlimited being. . . .”
But he also insists that the man in the dungeon all his life would have no idea of God *10* and that if men in general were left to their reflections apart from revelation they would likely end up pantheists. *11*
How does Edwards combine these apparently conflicting ideas? Nowhere to my knowledge does he explain the consistency specifically. Apparently, he was not conscious of a problem here. It seems to me that what he is assuming is that because of human sin men suppress this evident knowledge of God revealed in nature and only special revelation opens their hearts - not eyes - to natural as well as special revelation.
Even special revelation could not illumine the mind without first changing the sinner’s heart. There is a common failing among Calvinists, including Calvin himself, in making the contrast here between natural and special revelation rather than between natural and special-cum-illumination revelation. The sinful man’s problem is not the absence of light but a natural inability to admit what he cannot help seeing. He does see it enough to know that he does not like it. That attitude being repugnant to his conscience he tries to deny that he sees the light. Edwards’ Spinozist is born out of hatred of the light rather than any natural inability to see it.
Nevertheless, Edwards does not say all this in so many words, though it seems to me that this must be what he is thinking if his different stances are in harmony as he obviously thought that they were.
These seem to be the steps in this thinking:
1. Light comes into the mind of man.
2. Unregenerate man being a sinner and naturally a hater of light tries to get rid of this unwelcome light which he cannot avoid.
3. Thus he tries to bury it out of his sight.
4. This angers God who is light and He punishes man by letting him go his way in darkness.
5. Man in his hatred and under divine punishment tries to explain away that light that he has seen and suppresses.
6. God lets him go ever deeper into his self-made darkness and the most brilliant thinkers become the most darkened in understanding, the devil himself being the “greatest blockhead of all” according to Edwards.
7. Then God gives special divine Rev_8:1-13. Revelation is met with even greater opposition from unregenerate men because it is so much brighter light which he therefore hates more.
9. At some point, God changes the disposition of the elect from one hating light to one loving it.
10. Then all the suppressed light comes welcome to the surface of conscious experience and expression and with it a desire for ever greater light.
11. Converted men even grow in the light of nature. They revel in the light of special revelation. They now love light - all light.
12. Then the natural revelation which was always there and always compelling but always suppressed and always denied comes into free and happy acknowledgement.
13. So if men are not converted they will suppress the light they have and attempt to deny it. This accounts for their becoming Spinozists or Hobbesians apart from special revelation. It is not, however, the superiority of special revelation which accounts for even natural light being welcomed. It is that in connection with the impartation of special revelation - and only with the impartation of special revelation - God converts the elect and makes their minds inclined to the light which they otherwise would reject. *12*
If Wallace Anderson understates Edwards’ metaphysics, Norman Fiering denies his epistemology. Reacting to Perry Miller’s overemphasis on the influence Locke had on the thinking of Edwards, Fiering underemphasizes and even virtually denies the latter’s “sensational” elements. *13*
Why would Fiering want to deny the empirical approach in Edwards? Apparently he associates it with Locke’s under-appreciation, to put the matter mildly, of metaphysics and over-speculation. It is obvious that Edwards was not disposed to be under-speculative. However, it does not necessarily follow that he was therefore necessarily anti-empirical. As we noticed, he felt that Locke stopped when he should not have stopped. He did not differ with Locke’s approach but with his failure to carry it through to its proper metaphysical conclusion. Fiering apparently thinks that if one begins with Locke he must end with Locke.
This leads to an associated, virtually inevitable, error. Fiering concludes (apparently because he could not imagine anyone associated in any way with the thinking of Locke coming to a metaphysical conclusion), that such a conclusion which is undeniably present in Edwards must come from another source, namely dogmatism, theological dogmatism. Edwards’ religion takes over and he fideistically begins with God. Fiering thinks he has Wallace Anderson in his corner on this, though Anderson is merely noting concurrence with the theological tradition and not citing it as the source. It is clear that Anderson correctly sees Edwards as coming to these conclusions independently, though they do accord with his Calvinistic tradition. I may add that Edwards is Calvinistic because he thinks that way and does not think that way because he is Calvinistic. *14* Perry Miller used to see this independence in Edwards and wondered how he thought he could square it with his dogmas, while Fiering sees the dogmas and concludes that they account for his thinking.
Fiering’s attempt to explain Edwards’ reputation for empiricism is interesting. For one thing it is thought that Edwards’ immaterialism came from his subjective idealism. That is somehow supposed to explain his empiricism. The second reason is that Edwards was thought to be a Cartesian corpuscularean and Fiering correctly observes that Edwards’ view of atoms is not the typical empirical view of the Gassendi group. However, the fact that Edwards sees atoms as at once extended and indivisible and explains this apparent paradox as signifying that God is the power of the atom, certainly does not rule out empiricism but grounds it in God.
It is almost amusing that so many researchers feel obliged to find some extra-source for every one’s thinking. It never seems like a live option that these thoughts may have been independently arrived at. Edwards’ metaphysics has to be derived from Plato via Neoplatonism; his empiricism must come from John Locke; his Calvinism became his because it was the faith of his fathers. Edwards himself insisted on calling no man father but his interpreters always know better. Motivsvorschung is the favorite sport in libraries and, by comparison, seeing the grass grow is a tame game.
Probably the most interesting account of Edwards’ epistemology and metaphysics was offered some years ago by Mattoon Curtis. *15* For Curtis, Edwards was virtually a Kantian.
Before launching into his analysis, Curtis expresses appreciation for Edwards’ genius as a scientist. He quotes from M.C. Tyler:
He [Edwards] suggested that there is in the atmosphere some other ethereal matter considerably rarer than atmospheric air; that water is a compressible fluid, a fact not publicly announced by scientific men until 30 years afterwards; that water, in freezing, looses its specific gravity; and that the existence of frigeritic particles is doubtful. In explaining the phenomena of thunder and lightning, without any knowledge of the electric fluid and long before the invention of the Leyden jars, he rejected the notion then prevalent upon the subject, and came nearer to the theory afterward discovered by Franklin than any other human mind had done. He demonstrated that the fixed stars are suns; he explained the formation of river channels, the different refrangability of the rays of light, the growth of trees, the processes of evaporation, and the philosophy of the lever; and he made important observations on sound, on electricity, on the tendency of winds from the coast to bring rain, and on the cause of colors. *16*
Edwards says that God is a “necessary supposition.” That is because it is a contradiction to suppose Him to be absolute nothing (which is the one other disjunction and which is the essence of all contradictions). But being includes in it all that we call God. God is a necessary being because “there is no other way.” “There is nothing else supposable.” Then following the correct derivation of Edwards’ idealism, Curtis makes some interesting observations. For one thing, Berkeley as a source is ruled out categorically. Curtis considers Malebranche, Norris, and Collier also as highly problematical sources. On the other hand, there is no difficulty in believing that Edwards, although isolated in a new world, advanced upon Locke in a way similar to Berkeley. Sir William Hamilton had pointed out that it is not difficult to draw idealism from Locke. Reid thought it strange that Locke, who wrote so much about ideas, should not see the consequences Berkeley thought so obvious. *17*
If Edwards is saved from pantheism, it is by a personal pronoun. God is never ‘it,’ as with Emerson. Still, pantheism and panpsychism lie about Edwards. Bodies have no proper being of their own, and spirits are the communications of the great original spirit. Doubtless in metaphysical strictness and propriety he is and there is none else. *18*
We agree. Professor Fenn had seen Edwards saved by his use of “as it were.” *19* But that is not his only means of salvation, as we shall see.
Curtis believed that Edwards was opposed to theistic argumentation or what he calls rationalism. He remarks that Edwards
turned his back upon this whole movement of rationalism, of Bridgewater Treatises and Boyle Lectures, and roundly asserted the incompetence of the understanding in the realm of religion, and, in the place of the reason of the understanding, declared that competence of the reason of the will. *20*
Here Curtis is hopelessly confused. But before I proceed to critical analysis, we had better hear the rest of Curtis’ statement. Edwards
does not put forth any demonstration of God’s existence, but asserts that the understanding is incapable of giving any proof. The existence of God is a necessary supposition; there is no other way. For “the miserableness of our conceptions” leads us to objections. “Our notions of the Divine Nature,” he asserts, “are so imperfect that our imperfect idea admits of a disjunction; for whatever is not absolutely perfect doth so. . . . Thus, for instance, we cannot conceive of God without attributing succession to Him; but that notion brings along with it contingent existence and induces with it a manifold possibility.” *21*
All of this Curtis cited from E. C. Smyth. *22* Smyth is not confused in his thinking about Edwards as Curtis is. To continue with Curtis:
“If we take reason strictly,” he (Edwards) says, “not for the faculty of mental perception in general, but for the rational summation, or a power of inferring by argument, the perceiving of spiritual beauty and excellency, no more belongs to reason than it belongs to the sense of feeling to perceive colors or to the power of seeing to perceive the beauty or loveliness of anything. Such a perception does not belong to that faculty. Reason’s work is to perceive truth and not excellency.” [This latter quotation was taken from “Divine and Supernatural Light.”] “Thus, natural or rational religion,” Edwards declares with Kant and the school of Ritschl, “is impossible. Not only is the light of nature insufficient to discover this religion, but the law of nature is not sufficient to establish it, or to give any room for it.” *23*
This is an egregious blunder in interpretation. Jonathan Edwards used all the traditional theistic arguments. For example, his argument from being is essentially the ontological argument in its most acute form. *24* God is rationally demonstrated and denial of His existence involves total contradiction, according to Edwards. He used the causal or cosmological argument very foundationally. The teleological argument is quite central in M 880 and his sermon/lecture on Rom_1:20. As a matter of fact, that unpublished sermon which Curtis probably never saw, shows that Edwards would have been a ready contributor to the Bridgewater Treatises had they been written in his era. My own “An Outline of the Apologetics of Jonathan Edwards” *25* sketches his overall theistic argumentation in considerably more detail than is necessary to show that Curtis has grossly misconceived the situation.
Nevertheless, this misconception is in some sense understandable. Arguing against the Deists, Edwards strenuously contended that they did not learn the lessons of nature without having them pointed out to them by the Bible. Here he follows John Locke in noting that it is one thing to recognize something on one’s own and another to recognize it when pointed out. He labors this in M 1340 from which Curtis quotes often. Men, including Deists, have only learned about God from special revelation, Edwards argues throughout. Plato was a superior philosopher because, in the opinion of Edwards, he must somehow have learned about the divine revelation to the Jews. The difficulties in natural revelation, even when the message is heard, Edwards stresses in that same M 1340.
We can see what Curtis has done. He has read into Edwards’ denigration of the knowledge acquired from natural revelation the notion that there is no knowledge to be acquired. The knowledge is certainly there, as Edwards repeatedly cites. One of the reasons for Curtis’ misunderstanding is his failure to recognize the difference between what men learn from nature on their own and what nature actually teaches. Theistic argument rests not on what people may learn, but what people may be taught by looking carefully at the lessons of nature. In this department, Edwards was a superb teacher of traditional apologetics.
The other reason for Curtis’ misunderstanding is the failure to recognize Edwards’ distinction between mere rational knowledge and supernatural, divine, and saving knowledge. The distinction is sharply made in Edwards’ sermon on the “Divine and Supernatural Light,” but Curtis does not notice it. He simply observes the absence of this saving light from the reason of natural man. But it is not absent from the reason of man, supernaturally restored by regeneration. Nor is it speculatively absent even from the thoughtful unregenerate mind.
When Curtis goes on to compare Edwards with Kant and Albrecht Ritschl his error, of course, follows him. He has accurately described the thinking of Kant and Ritschl. He has inaccurately described the thinking of Edwards. Consequently, he quite accurately identifies his incorrect exposition of Edwards with his correct exposition of Kant and Ritschl. Since it happens not to be a true exposition of Edwards the parallelism fails.
Kant’s opposition to theistic argumentation Curtis finds in Edwards also. This is a “Kantean element” which is actually absent in and indeed controverted by Edwards who wrote:
We can have no proof that is purely demonstrative relating to the being and nature of God, His creation of the world, the dependence of all things on Him, the nature of bodies or spirits, the nature of our own souls, or any of the great truths or morality and natural religion but what is metaphysical. *26*
This statement is the strongest possible indication that Edwards did believe in the rational demonstration of the existence and the qualities of God. He even believed and argued that the Trinity could be understood by “naked reason.” *27* But Curtis cites this statement from The Freedom of the Will as evidence against natural theology. Why so? Because for some unfathomable reason, Curtis thinks that anything metaphysical is non-rational. There is no such notion as that in Jonathan Edwards. The metaphysical is the ultimately rational. Granted, there are many metaphysical mysteries hovering about the matter. Yet if anything is to be known and understood, it is by metaphysics. Edwards’ supernatural knowledge was in no sense opposed to natural knowledge. It transcended it, but it did not contradict it. Immanuel Kant could not, in this area, have a more diametrical opposite than Jonathan Edwards.
On the subject of causality, Curtis again finds a similarity between Edwards and Kant based on a misunderstanding of Edwards. Describing Edwards, Curtis writes: “There is nothing objective in cause. It is ‘that natural disposition in us when we see a thing begin to be to suppose it owing to a cause.’” *28* A little later, Curtis gives another quotation of Edwards that does seem to justify his interpretation:
We know our own existence and the existence of everything that we are conscious of in our minds intuitively; but all our reasoning with respect to real existence depends upon that unavoidable and invariable disposition of the mind, when it sees a thing begin to be, to conclude certainly that there is a cause of it. Or if it sees a thing to be in a very orderly, regular and exact manner to conclude that some design regulated and disposed it. *29*
Finally, Curtis quotes Edwards, “All truth is in the mind, and only there.” *30* Edwards does not mean that there is nothing objective about cause. It simply does not exist independently of someone’s observation of the events. The eyes see a given visible event. The mind “sees” the connection between two events. One sight is through the senses and the other is direct. This is not the same as saying that only that which is apprehended by the senses is objective and that which is apprehended only by the mind is not.
Edwards did not teach that causality was a category of the mind imposed upon the sense manifold as Immanuel Kant held. There is a distinct difference here. Edwards did not agree, however, with persons who naively supposed they could see cause as they could see the sequence of events tied together by causal relationship. Consider the final statement which Curtis cited, “All truth is in the mind and only there.” Edwards was, of course, an idealist. As such, he did not deny the reality of truth, but only the external locality of it. It was in the mind and not in the external world was Edwards’ opinion. But it was produced in the mind by external data, not imposed by the mind as external data.
Curtis next turns his concentrated attention on the most metaphysically crucial of all Edwards’ Miscellanies: M 1340: “The Insufficiency of Reason as a Substitute for Revelation.” Edwards was not here referring to reason as an aid to or even demonstration of revelation, but as a substitute for revelation. Edwards, who had as high, and I would say higher, estimate of reason than Tindal, would never grant that it could be a substitute for revelation as Tindal had argued. It must be remembered, as Curtis forgets, the various arguments which are contained in this Miscellany are all attempting to say one thing: reason is no substitute for revelation. It seems to me that when Matoon Curtis marshalls no less than eight arguments for Edwardsian Kantianism from this one Miscellany that he has overlooked the fundamental nature of the Miscellany. He seems to think M 1340 is against the use of reason in theology, whereas all Edwards’ arguing is against the use of reason as a substitute for revelation, wherein Edwards shows Tindal to be unreasonable. Edwards was in no way opposed to the use of reason in understanding revelation, in proving revelation, and in expounding revelation. Here he is simply opposing those who would, as the Deists, make more of reason than is reasonable.
I have probably already given Curtis too much space but I could not resist - considering the fascination of his theme and his argument. Nor can I disregard his eight arguments that follow though I must necessarily confine them to a lengthy footnote. *31*
Jonathan Edwards would seem to be an empirical noumenalist. He taught that even natural, unregenerate man knows God speculatively. Though suppressing that unwelcome knowledge, if and when he is regenerated and illuminated in connection with special biblical revelation, he will gain saving knowledge which in turn will lead him to welcome merely speculative knowledge also. To this revelation we now turn.