Edwards: A Theological Life

Scripture focus

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Philippians 1:21 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Edwards belonged to what the classicist Whitney Oates called 'open system' thinkers — minds, like Plato's or Augustine's, that treat every big question as unfinished business and return to it again and again over a lifetime. Unlike a 'closed system' thinker such as Aristotle, who settles an issue and moves on, Edwards kept reworking his central convictions — about beauty, being, holiness, and consent — for nearly forty years, letting new reading, preaching, and pastoral experience continually reshape what he had already concluded.

This open-endedness was not vagueness but method. Edwards's chief tool of discovery was writing itself: he filled private notebooks, especially the numbered 'Miscellanies,' with closely argued essays that tested a proposition against objections before he trusted it. He described his own procedure to Princeton's trustees as pursuing 'every important hint... to the utmost' — a habit so constant that he sometimes ran short of paper and wrote in the margins of other books.

Two strategies organized this sprawling output: concatenation, his search for hidden connections between apparently unrelated ideas, and subsumption, his gathering of many topics under a single heading. The result, evident already in the very first Miscellany entry, was a theology built less like a completed building than like a living, still-growing organism.

Key points

• Edwards fits the pattern of an 'open system' thinker — like Plato or Augustine — continually revisiting core convictions rather than settling them once and for all.
• His primary method of theological discovery was daily private writing, sustained for more than three decades in notebooks such as the Miscellanies.
• Edwards described his method to Princeton's trustees as pursuing 'every important hint' a subject suggested 'to the utmost.'
• His strategies of 'concatenation' (linking apparently unrelated ideas) and 'subsumption' (gathering many topics under one heading) show a mind seeking unity within enormous diversity.
• This developmental method later diverged sharply from some of his own followers, who imitated his experimental style but lost his foundational vision.

A line worth remembering

Growth is a sign of life—and not necessarily a sign of intellectual weakness or vacillation.

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 2

Related Scripture

• 2 Peter 3:18
• Proverbs 4:18
• Colossians 1:9-10
• Hebrews 6:1

For reflection and discussion

1. What is the difference between a conviction that is still growing and one that is simply unsettled?
2. How might the daily discipline of writing out your thoughts change how deeply you understand what you believe?
3. Edwards's followers sometimes copied his method but lost his substance — where have you seen that happen in other fields?