Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
inclosed in a mesh of subtleties, if his theology and metaphysics were
never quite reconciled, blame must be laid upon the difficulty of
the undertaking rather than on the incapacity of the thinker. To one
cardinal principle Edwards was faithful--the conception of the majesty
and sufficiency of God; and this polar idea provides the clue to both
his philosophical and theological systems.
Yet with this as a guide there is much that remains perplexing. There
are inconsistencies in his thought as there were in his pastoral
life; and we shall understand his position only when we recognize the
contrary tendencies which confused him, as the inevitable consequences
of a system of thought that was at once reactionary and progressive,
the outcome of certain latent inconsistencies too antagonistic for any
thinker to reconcile. As the defender of the traditional theology,
setting his face against the developing experience of his generation,
and as a rigid disciplinarian, reverting to the older Separatist
conception of a church of the elect, and rejecting the “whole way
covenant” of his grandfather Stoddard, he may perhaps appear in the
light of a reactionary. But as the expounder of philosophic idealism
he was looking forward to Emerson; and as the advocate of the new
revivalistic methods, exalting the experience of conversion as the
central fact of the Christian life, and assisting the forces that were
drawing church and state apart, he was a pronounced revolutionist,
the schismatic leader of the New Lights and the father of later
Congregationalism. That Edwards was aware of certain inconsistencies is
fairly evident; that he was puzzled, hesitated, and stopped halfway in
his labors, is evident too, unless we believe, with Mrs. Stowe, that
certain of his speculations were too daring to put into print. The
chains that bound him were too strong to be broken; the contradictions
that lay at the root of the Calvinistic system could be eradicated only
by grubbing up the whole, and for that the time had not yet come.
In his early years, before his conversion turned him aside from
his true path, setting the apologetics of the theologian above the
speculations of the philosopher, Edwards gave promise of becoming a
strikingly creative thinker. Following the native bent of his genius,
he plunged into the study of metaphysics with such fruitful results
that it seemed likely that New England Puritanism was at last to
come to flower; that the mystical perception of the divine love,
which had steeped the early Puritan thought in emotion and quickened
it to poetry, was now to create a system of philosophy which, like
transcendentalism in the next century, should adequately express the
aspirations of the New England mind. There is no more interesting phase
in the early history of Edwards than the transition from religious
mysticism to philosophical idealism. The yearning for the knitting of
the soul to Christ, as expressed in the imagery of the Song of Songs,
burgeoned into a larger idealism that translated the Rose of Sharon and
the Lily of the Valley into an all-pervasive spirit of divine life. In
certain moods it is the mystic who cries, “My soul breaketh for the
longing it hath; my soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they who watch
for the morning.”
He was reading one day the words of Scripture [says Allen,
paraphrasing Edwards’ diary], “Now unto the King eternal, immortal,
invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever, Amen,”
when there came to him for the first time a sort of inward, sweet
delight in God and divine things. A sense of the divine glory was,
as it were, diffused through him. He thought how happy he should
be if he might be rapt up to God in Heaven, swallowed up in him
forever. He began to have an inward, sweet sense of Christ and the
work of redemption. The Book of Canticles attracted him as a fit
expression for his mood. It seemed to him as if he were in a kind
of vision, alone in the mountains or some solitary wilderness,
conversing sweetly with Christ and wrapt and swallowed up in
God.... God’s Excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed
to appear in everything--in the sun, moon, and stars; in clouds
and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all
nature, which used greatly to fix my mind.[164]
In other moods the intellect gains ascendency over the emotions, and it
is the idealistic metaphysician who speaks. With a searching curiosity
that impelled him to ask what lies behind the outward semblance of
things, binding them into a coherent whole and imparting to the world
of experience a compelling unity, he came early to an interpretation
distinctly Berkeleyan. From what source he derived it has been much
debated and remains unanswered; nevertheless it is clear that it is
closely related to his religious mysticism. When he inquired what lies
back of the outward semblance, what is the thing in itself behind
attributes and qualities, the existence of which is implicit in our
perception of time and space, but which cannot be resolved into the
things perceived, it was natural that he should have interpreted this
_Ding an sich_ in terms of God. “Men are wont to content themselves
by saying merely that it is something; but that something is _He_ in
whom all things consist.”[165] The world of sensation thus translates
itself into a world of ideas; and this world of ideas, the expression
of the divine mind, is the only reality. The more important of his
early generalizations are given by Allen in some extracts from his
notes on the “Mind”: “Bodies have no existence of their own.” “All
existence is mental; the existence of all things is ideal.” “The brain
exists only mentally, or in idea.” “Instead of matter being the only
proper substance, and more substantial than anything else because it is
hard and solid, yet it is truly nothing at all, strictly and in itself
considered.” “The universe exists nowhere but in the divine mind.”
“Space is necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent. But I had as
good speak plain. I have already said as much as that space is God.”
“And indeed the secret lies here,--that which truly is the substance
of all bodies is the infinitely exact and precise and perfectly stable
Idea in God’s mind, together with His stable will that the same shall
gradually be communicated to us, and to other minds, according to
certain fixed and exact established methods and laws; or, in somewhat
different language, the infinitely exact, precise, Divine Idea,
together with the answerable, perfectly exact, precise, and stable
will, with respect to correspondent communications to created minds and
effects on their minds.”[166]
Edwards had come to such conclusions before the normal unfolding
of his mind was interrupted by his conversion. From the first a
strong bias toward theology had tended to warp his interest in the
purely metaphysical, and with the quickening of an active religious
experience, he turned to examine the dogmas which expressed his faith.
The call of the churches in distress came to him, and he made ready
his logic to do battle with the enemy. Against the twin tendencies
that were undermining the foundations of Calvinism--Arminianism with
its humanistic emphasis and deism with its mechanistic--the deepest
instincts of Edwards protested. The profound God-consciousness that
filled him was stirred by what seemed an infidel attack upon the
divine glory and sufficiency; the mystic and idealist was aroused to
protest against a theology that conceived of religion as consisting
of benevolence toward men rather than in union with God; and
against a philosophy that in constructing a mechanical system was
de-personalizing God into a vague First Cause, and bowing him politely
out of the universe. In so great a crisis his duty seemed clear--to
vindicate, not the ways of God, but God himself to men; to assert the
glory and sufficiency of God even to the extent of minifying the
capacities and potentialities of man.
The basis of his defense was already provided in his metaphysics, the
conception of the divine idea existent in God’s mind and expressed
in His stable will. The needs of his polemics, however, thrust into
relief the secondary rather than the primary element in his philosophy,
exalting the doctrine of the divine will to the obscuring of the divine
idea. How this came about is sufficiently clear in the light of the
fact that in explaining the existence of evil, Calvinism fell back on
determinism: the dogma of election could be fitted to the conception of
a precise and stable will of God. The long feud between Arminianism and
Calvinism resulted from emphasis laid upon different attributes of the
Godhood. Shall God be interpreted in terms of will or love? If He is
the sovereign ruler of the universe, He is also the common father; and
that which broadly divides later theological systems from earlier is
the shift from the former interpretation to the latter. The strategic
weakness of Edwards’s position lay in his assumption of the divine
sovereignty as a cardinal postulate.
But in adhering to the doctrine of predetermined election by the
sovereign will of God, Edwards did unconscious violence to the
instincts of the mystic, that throughout his earlier speculations--and
in much of his later, as well--impelled him to glorify the love of God
the Father, and the sweetness of spiritual communion with Him. The
practical necessities of the preacher, called upon to uphold the dogma
of election in face of growing disbelief, seem to have forced him to
such a position; but once having entered upon the train of speculation
opened by the question of divine polity involved in “His having mercy
on whom He will have mercy, while whom He will. He hardeneth,” he came
somewhat reluctantly to accept the doctrine of God’s sovereignty as
the cardinal principle of his theology, the creative source of his
thinking. Thereafter he followed a path that led back to an absolutist
past, rather than forward to a more liberal future. He had broken
wholly with the social tendencies of his age and world.[167]
The philosophical conception of divine sovereignty was too abstract
to concern the New England laity; it was rather against the dependent
dogmas of election and total depravity that the revolt was rising.
And in defense of these threatened dogmas Edwards put forth his best
strength. The crux of the matter, obviously, lay in the difficult
question of the power of will. The entire structure of Calvinistic
theology had been erected upon the assumption of determinism; and
it must stand or fall according as the argument should justify or
fail to justify that hypothesis. If the human will is effectively
free to choose between good and evil, the dogma of the elect must
go down with the dogma of predestination; and the teachings of the
Arminians--tending, as they seemed to the Calvinist, to abase the
creator in exalting the creature, and minifying the sovereignty of God
in magnifying the excellence of man--would be in a way to prevail.
Around this crucial point the battle had long raged, and it was with
full realization of the critical nature of the problem that Edwards
resolved to penetrate to the root of the matter, and by subjecting
the question of determinism to exact analysis, rout the enemies of
Calvinism from the inmost keep of their stronghold. His celebrated work
_On the Freedom of the Will_, written in 1754, not only was his most
important contribution to theology, but it was the last great defense
of the conservatism that was stifling the intellectual life of New
England.
The argument of this knotty book rests on a psychological rather than
a metaphysical basis. Compressed into the briefest terms it runs thus: