The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University is holding a conference “from October 5th through October 7th, 2007 at The First Churches in Northampton, Massachusetts to consider the relevance of the thought of Jonathan Edwards to our current environmental and ecological concerns.” Because Edwards “was a keen observer of nature, and filled his voluminous notebooks with exact and sometimes poetic descriptions of a wide variety of natural phenomena,” Yale considers him to have “conceived of the world Neo-Platonically as an emanation of God’s external glory.” They note “that Edwards interpreted nature as a book of types or symbols, coordinate with scripture, which shadowed forth moral and spiritual lessons. He highly valued natural beauty since for him it was an image of divine beauty or love. His ethics of benevolence or consent to being in general morally enfranchises not only human but all other sentient beings. Clearly, then, Edwards has much to say to those working in the general fields of ecology, environmental philosophy and theology, and in the more specific fields of environmental ethics and aesthetics. Papers on any aspect of Edwards’ philosophical theology pertaining to the environment are welcome. Further, papers on other American thinkers, particularly those like Emerson and Thoreau who have some intellectual kinship with Edwards and whose ideas are relevant to current environmental issues, are also welcome.” (all quotes above from the Yale website)
Can you philosopher-types help me with this: “He conceived of the world Neo-Platonically as an emanation of God’s external glory.”
And one more thing, I realize that his hair was long with beautiful curls, but did Edwards wear sandals and a toe-ring and have a peace sign painted on the side of his horse-carriage? …just kidding.
But maybe we should ask, would Edwards drive an SUV?
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Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his the Church with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He founded Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
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The Neo-Platonic thing probably has something to do with Augustinian theology. They’re really stretching. Edwards had intellectual kinship with Emerson and Thoreau? I don’t think he was on their blogroll.
By the way, my sandals and toe-ring give me special powers over Southern Baptists.
I picture him in an old suburban (because he can’t afford a new one) or a beat-up Toyota pickup while he makes his rounds to the farming families in his fold.
I have to wonder what they mean by “emanation.” That’s a tricky word, especially combined with anything “Platonic.” If they had said that Edwards saw creations beauty as a reflection of God’s glory, I would concur. But this creation is not eternal…most of it anyway. And at best it is passing away in its present state. So, I do not believe that Edwards would say it was a direct emanation of His glory. I’ll have to think on it.
P.S. I do not think myself to be the philosopher. I’m just thinking out loud here.
Probably refers to plato’s concept of the forms. All earthly things are mere copies of an eternal form. A chair is a copy of a an eternal form of a chair. A work of art for example is three times removed from the eternal form. First there is the ethernal, then there is the natural, and thirdly there is the copy of a copy–what the artist has protrayed.
One more thing. Beauty is an eternal form and as such I can see how the connection can be made betweeen that of natural beauty and Plato’s eternal forms. The forms are the product of Plato’s mind of god. Edwards would problbly be close philosophically to this, but of course this not the connection Edwards would make.
No, Henry. He’d be driving a Dodge Ram. Because he wouldn’t just Dodge it, he’d Ram it.
*runs and hides*
I am amazed at Edwards’profound impact on church and culture, and can’t help but wonder what might happen if I/we spent as much time and energy pursuing God through disciplined Bible study and fervent prayer as did Edwards.
We have the technological widgets and gadgets in our time, but it seems to me that we are lacking in things that really matter. I am thinking particularly of godliness through discipline … the kind that characterized spiritual giants such as Edwards.
David is correct, “neo-Platonism” is reference to Augustinianism. There’s some truth there, insofar as Augustine had a tendency to go quite far. However, Edwards was on the other side of the Reformation, and to connect him and his natural theology to Augustine and Plato smacks of older scholarship about Protestant Scholasticism, which tended to teach that the Reformed posited their theology around particular philosophical notions about determinism; the Lutherans selected dogmatic/predogmatic ideas about justification, etc. It’s pretty derivative of Heppe. Richard Muller and others have done a great deal to debunk that theory.
In fact, Yale is pretty much overlooking all of the Middle Ages, for these secular philosophies were baptized and changed a great deal prior to the Reformation, and the Reformed and High Orthodox themselves only appealed to them in an ancillary fashion and were very eclectic in their selection. They would also change them, and they’d appeal to them insofar as they reflected what they saw from the exegesis of Scripture. One can hardly say that Psalm 8 is “neo-Platonic.”
To get from Plato to Edwards, somebody would need to do something like this, because there are several intervening steps:
First, he’d have to begin with the Platonic doctrine of God, with direct quotes from Plato. Then he’d need to summarize the Philonic doctrine of God.
And as soon as he takes this step he would also need to consider the possibility of crossbreeding. For we can characterize Philonic Platonism as either Platonic Judaism or Judaic Platonism. In other words, Philo’s Judaism is colored by Plato, but his Platonism is also colored by his Judaism.
Next, he’d need to summarize the Plotinian doctrine of God. As with Philo, this would also allow for the possibility of crossbreeding inasmuch as Plotinus was a post-Christian philosopher who studied under a Christian philosopher (Ammonius Saccas). From there he’d need to summarize the doctrine of God in Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, Athanasius, and the Cappadocian Fathers.
From there he would need to shift from East to West to summarize of the doctrine of God in Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm, as well as Aquinas. He would also need to summarize the doctrine of God in Maimonides and Avicenna as these feed into Medieval Scholasticism.
From there he would need to summarize the doctrine of God in Calvin and Reformed Scholasticism. He would need to document the evolution of the doctrine of God through these various permutations, with direct quotes to show direct dependence. Then and only then can they get to Edwards.
It is really hard to believe that Edwards “shared intellectual kinship.”
I wouldn’t think so. They were inferior thinkers with ties to the occult in ideas of spiritism and pantheism. Edwards clearly made a distinction between the creature and the creator. The connections that Edwards made from the shadow to the heavenly drew from the divine revelation of Scripture and not the gnostic inferrences of Emerson and Thoreau. Edwards saw the perfections of nature in their proper context as incomplete without the Scripture.
He was an intellectual and we should not be surprised if as a scholar and student of life he held in high regard the environment as a school house, but he would never consider the world an “emanation” of God in the gnostic sense. He was too precise in making distinction between the heavenly perfections and the earthly reflections of God’s glory.
“That God uses the whole creation, in his government of it, for the good of his people…The whole universe is a machine, or chariot, which God hath made for his own use, as is rrepresented in Ezekiel’s vision. God’s seat is heaven, where he sits and governs…The inferior part of the creation, this visible universe, subject to such continual changes and revolutions, are the wheels of the chariot. God’s providence, in the constant revolution, alterations, and successive events, is represented by the motion of the wheels of the chariot, by the spirit of him who sits on his throne on the heavens, or above the firmament…Thus it is easy to conceive, how God should seek the good of the creature, consisting in the creature’s knowledge and holiness, and even his happiness, from a supreme regard to Himself; as his happiness arises from that which is an image and participation of God’s own beauty; and consists in the creature’s exercising a supreme regard to God, and complacence in him; in beholding God’s glory, in esteeming and loving it, and rejoicing in it, and in his exercising and testifying love and supreme respect to God: which is the same thing with the creature’s exalting God as his chief good, and making him his supreme end.
And though the emanation of God’s fulness, intended in the creation, is to the creature as its object; and though the creature is the subject of the fulness communicated, which is the creature’s good; yet it does not necessarily follow, that even in so doing, God did not make himself his end. It comes to the same thing. God’s respect to the creature’s good, and his respect to himself, is not divided respect; but both are united in, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself….” JE
This is found among a discourse where JE is describing the reason for the creation, of both the physical universe and of man. The word emanation has nothing what so ever to do with the oocult ideas that are found in the gnostic heresies of Emerson and Thoreau. In this case it has to do with the showing forth of the glory of God for communication to man of the attributes of God for their mutual enjoyment of one another’s fellowship, not the extension of his being. Anyone familiar with Edwards appreciates his exaltation of God as transcendant above his creation. Even in these few passages the distinction between the two is unequivocably clear.
In the Yale piece they say: “enfranchises not only human but all other sentient beings.”
What other sentient beings? What is being put forth here is pantheistic spiritism. The inference is that the whole of creation is sentient, an organic whole with a collective soul. Sound familiar, just take one giant leap backward to the organic views of Germany in the 1930′s where we last saw the rise of this “father country” “mother earth” marriage. This “mother earth” dialogue becomes normative in enviromentalism with all its declensions. Trying to tie Edwards to this mess is like trying to mix oil and water. They are entirely different cosmologies. Edwards would never propose the deification of the creation as Emerson and Thoreau did and the Yale crowd are doing now.
I wonder if the staff at Yale is quite so high on Edwards in other areas? “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” anyone?
I believe he would drive a SUV.
One with big, knoby, “turtle crossing the road” crushing tires and a rack of possum blinding lights and a big bumper sticker which reads: PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals.
Fred
Greetings from the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale. I stumbled upon the posting about the “JE and the Environment” conference, and thought I would contribute. I apologize that I’m late to the conversation.
First, to set the record straight, the JEC did not sponsor the conference on Edwards and the Environment; the language quoted in the original blog is not ours, but that of Richard Hall, who organized the event. We did of course advertise the event, and I participated in it, but (please take note) we are happy to advertise any gatherings or activities relating to Edwards. The paper I gave was on “Edwards on the Conflagration,” which should suggest how dimly I look on JE as a resource for environmentalism, without totally ruling him out. That said, there is no doubt he had a strong sense that humankind would be punished for their abuse of the earth and its creatures (Rom. 8:22). Also, his view of creation as containing “images” or “shadows” of divine things should not be dismissed so flippantly. Edwards wrote, “I believe the whole universe . . . to be full of images of divine things, as full as a language is of words . . .” His emanationist views, his aesthetics, and his ethics present considerable challenges that tie into his neo-Calvinist stance in thought-provoking ways, and I urge readers of Fide-O to explore them. The JEC stands ready to help in all such inquiries, as when we spoke last year at New Orleans Baptist Seminary on Edwards, election, and evangelism, or at numerous churches which ask us to speak on Edwards and revivalism and other topics.
Second, I’m always amused by the way the Yale Edwards project is caricatured, not only on this blog but elsewhere. Actually, our two staff members are Dutch Reformed, and two of our editorial assistants are Baptists in training for ministry. Could you please try to acquaint yourselves with us and what we are trying to do–present the comprehensive writings of America’s greatest theologian in a free online archive–before you repeat inaccurate (and unchristian?) stereotypes?
Finally, I chuckled at the illustration of Edwards in his hippie glasses, and wonder if I could receive a good digital version of it. Actually, those round glasses probably aren’t too different from the spectacles we know he wore.
From a fellow laborer in the JE vineyard,
Ken Minkema