Metaphysics

Scripture focus

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Colossians 1:17 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Perry Miller called Edwards 'the greatest philosopher-theologian yet to grace the American scene,' and Bruce Kuklick named him the very 'foundation stone' of American philosophy. Yet, as McClymond and McDermott show, two centuries of scholars have disagreed sharply over how to characterize that philosophy — whether Edwards was fundamentally an empiricist following Locke, an idealist independently anticipating Berkeley, or a theocentric metaphysician closer to the Cambridge Platonists and Continental thinkers like Malebranche and Leibniz.

The chapter surveys the many single-word keys interpreters have proposed to unlock Edwards's system — empiricism, immediacy, beauty, disposition, semiotics — and finds that none has won lasting consensus, including Sang Lee's influential notion of a 'dispositional ontology,' later challenged by scholars such as Oliver Crisp and Stephen Holmes. Edwards's evident originality, drawing eclectically from Puritan, Platonist, and Lockean sources while transforming all of them, resists reduction to any single school.

This puts Edwards at odds with a long Protestant wariness of philosophy running from Luther ('the whole of Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light') to Karl Barth's rejection of analogia entis. Edwards, by contrast, embraced metaphysical argument as a genuine servant of theology rather than a threat to it.

Key points

• Edwards is widely regarded, by scholars like Perry Miller and Bruce Kuklick, as the founding figure of American philosophy.
• Scholars agree Edwards arrived at his idealism/immaterialism independently of George Berkeley, even though the two reached strikingly similar conclusions.
• No single interpretive 'key' — empiricism, immediacy, beauty, disposition, semiotics — has won lasting consensus as the master principle behind Edwards's metaphysics.
• Edwards drew eclectically on Puritan scholasticism, Cambridge Platonism, and Locke's empiricism, transforming rather than simply adopting his sources.
• Edwards's embrace of metaphysics set him apart from a long Protestant suspicion of philosophy running from Luther to Karl Barth.

A line worth remembering

the foundation stone in the history of American philosophy is Jonathan Edwards.

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 7

Related Scripture

• Romans 11:36
• Acts 17:28
• John 1:3
• Hebrews 1:3

For reflection and discussion

1. Why might it matter whether Edwards is remembered primarily as a philosopher or as a theologian?
2. What are the risks of trying to reduce a rich thinker's whole system to a single organizing idea?
3. Where do you see philosophy serving theology well today, rather than competing with or replacing it?