Works of Jonathan Edwards by Jonathan Edwards

First published: 1731-1758 (Collected Works: 1808-1809)

Type of work: Essays and sermons

Critical Evaluation

Jonathan Edwards, Calvinist preacher and philosopher, was America’s first eminent philosopher. Metaphysically, he was an idealist like Berkeley, but his primary concern was not with the traditional problems of philosophy but with theological issues that had a direct bearing on the religious practices of his time. He used his philosophy to assert the absolute sovereignty of God and to reaffirm the doctrine of original sin. He argued that reason and natural goodness are not enough to make a man virtuous: man needs revelation and disinterested benevolence if he is to be worth-while as a religious person. Showing the influence of Locke and Newton, Edwards argued that every event has a cause; he then went on to maintain that man is free, nevertheless, in that he can do as he wills and is therefore responsible for his actions.

The effect of Edwards’ work was a strong revival of idealism and Calvinistic pietism. His own congregation responded with a surprising number of conversions, as he reports in his essay. “Narrative of Surprising Conversions” (1736). Edwards attributed what he called the “awakening” to God’s influence, but it is clear that his efforts were at least instrumental. The Puritan revival grew to such proportions that the phrase “The Great Awakening” was devised to describe the period between 1740 and 1742.

Edwards’ earliest philosophical efforts are preserved in his “Notes on the Mind,” an early product of his reading of Locke’s ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Edwards went beyond Locke in much the same critical manner as Berkeley, pointing out that the primary qualities of extension, motion, and figure, are as much dependent on the senses as are the secondary qualities of color, taste, sound, and odor. Like Berkeley, Edwards decided that objects are combinations of ideas and that the “Substance of all Bodies, is the infinitely exact, and precise, and perfectly stable Idea, in God’s mind. . . .” Edwards identified perceptions with ideas and attributed all ideas to the influence of God. Like later idealists, he defined truth as the consistency of ideas with themselves: to know that a proposition is true one perceives the relations between ideas, but to have a false idea is to suppose that certain relations obtain among the ideas which, as a matter of fact, do not so obtain. The essay also presented an analysis of value in terms of “the inclination and disposition of the mind.” In NOTES ON THE MIND we also find the claim that “all Virtue, which is the Excellency of minds, is resolved into LOVE TO BEING,” an idea which was later developed in more detail in the essay titled “A Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue.”

In the essay on true virtue, written in 1755, Edwards wrote that “true virtue,” by which he meant actual, as distinguished from merely apparent, moral excellence, “consists in benevolence to Being general. Or perhaps to speak more accurately, it is that consent, propensity and union of heart to Being in general, that is immediately exercised in a general good will.” Edwards argued that all sin is the result of self-love which resists the directives of the “natural conscience.” True virtue is the actual consent to Being, the acceptance of God, and must be distinguished from the natural conscience which approves of true virtue, although it is not itself the virtuous response to Being.

For many outside of Edwards’ faith, the problem has always been that of reconciling the idea of God’s sovereignty with the idea that God, as Being, should be the object of disinterested benevolence, or love. In his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” for example, Edwards spoke from the pulpit of the imminence of hell for the wicked: “There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God. By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation. . . .” He went on to warn that “natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it.” He declared that the wrath of God is “everlasting” and that the torments of hell will continue for “millions and millions of ages. . . .” Finally, he concluded that “it would be a wonder if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons, that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning.”

In his PERSONAL NARRATIVE (1765) Edwards wrote that the doctrine of God’s sovereignty “used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me,” but he had come to regard the doctrine as “exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet.” For a man who had learned to consent to Being, the change of attitude was inevitable. But how was Edwards to reconcile for his congregation the idea of a sovereign God whose nature and grace are beyond discovery with the idea of a God worthy of love? To understand the answer, one must consider, in turn, two such famous sermons as “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” delivered in 1731, and “A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be Both a Scriptural and Rational Doctrine,” delivered in 1734.

The former sermon was enthusiastically received by Calvinist ministers who sought, through its publication, to defend their faith from attack. In his sermon Edwards argued that the redeemed are absolutely dependent on God, that His grace is entirely free, that all good is in God, and that the fact of man’s dependence glorifies God. To have any hope of an eternal life, a man should “abase himself, and reflect on his own exceeding unworthiness of such a favor, and to exalt God alone.” Although Edwards insisted that the redeemed have spiritual joy because of their dependence, the emphasis was more on the fact of dependence and on God’s glory than on the satisfaction of being redeemed.

In the sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” Edwards used the psychology he had learned from reading Locke to emphasize his claim that there is no natural way of coming to know and love God. The blessedness of some men, their spiritual happiness, resulted from God’s having given them a spiritual light whereby they could come to be convinced of God’s reality and excellence. Such a spiritual light cannot be explained in any of the ways by which we understand natural faculties of the understanding and will; it must be imparted by the Spirit of God. Edwards offered the doctrine as both scriptural and “rational.” The sermon concluded with a reassuring statement of the value of the spiritual light: “It draws forth the heart in a sincere love to God, which is the only principle of a true, gracious, and universal obedience; and it convinces of the reality of those glorious rewards that God has promised to them that obey him.”

By alternatively emphasizing the sovereignty of God and the joy of loving Him, Edwards achieved a balance between the harsh and the comforting aspects of his Calvinistic views.

Of his essays, the most famous is the essay on the freedom of the will, a book-length study entitled “A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of the Will, Which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue, and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame.” The will is quickly and simply defined as the power to choose. Edwards then agreed that Locke was correct in distinguishing between will and desire, the latter being restricted to what is absent; but he argued that the distinction was not important in the problem of free will. The will is determined, he wrote, because in consequence of some influence a choice is made. The will is always determined by the strongest motive; i.e., by the prevailing inclination. Whether one considers natural or moral necessity, in either case one is considering the connection of cause and effect. By freedom is meant the power to do as one pleases or wills. Thus, even if the will is determined by the strongest motive, there is no contradiction involved in saying that a man is free if he can do what he wills. If a person is forced to do something, then he is not free; but even if the will is determined by cause, a man is free if he can do as he chooses.

Edwards would have rejected the question of the freedom or determination of the will. For him the answer was that the will is both determined and free: it is determined in that it acts from causes; it is free provided the person who wills is able to act as he wills.

Edwards concluded that whenever an act results from the exercise of a man’s will, the agent is morally responsible for his act. By his philosophical resolution of the problem of free will Edwards was able to relate moral necessity to God’s necessarily choosing the best. He rejected Arminian criticisms which attempted to support a conception of liberty as “indifferent”; i.e., a conception of the will as capable of acting entirely without determination.

Other important essays by Edwards are “The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended” (1758), “True Grace” (1753), “Dissertation Concerning the End for which God Created the World” (1755), and “Treatise Concerning Religious Affections” (1746).

Edwards brought all of his philosophical powers to bear on the issues which kept Calvinism in the midst of religious controversy, and although few modern philosophical critics would grant that he in any way proved his case, it is generally conceded that he played a major role in the “Great Awakening” and gave American philosophy an initial impetus and influence that continued until realistic and pragmatic ideas effectively displaced religious idealism.