Reepicheep's notes on the PREFACE

Preface

The preface to Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will is an apologia for the use of distinct names to demarcate particular systems of theological conviction. His prime examples are the titles Calvinist and Arminian.

With a generous acknowledgment towards Christians who claim that the use of such distinctive titles may, “stigmatize those that differ from them with odious names,” (vi, ¶1) Edwards affirms that the practice of naming is an essential function of language. He says this succinctly, “. . . it is always a defect in language . . . to be obliged to make use of a description instead of a name,” (vii, ¶1) and later, “. . . our speech is delivered from the burden of a continual reiteration of diffuse descriptions, with which it must otherwise be embarrassed.” (viii, ¶1) Edwards cites the identification of persons whose ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds are from a particular geographical point (e.g. Spanish, French, etc) as plain testimony to the common sense of this practice.

The first project God gave Adam was to name, “every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens” (Gen. 2:18–20 ESV). In the place of, “that twelve-foot-tall, gray-colored, tusk-bearing, several-ton beast with heavy footfalls and an elongated nose that roams primarily in the sub-tropical region of that land-mass southwest of Eden,” Adam would have us speak of, “elephant.” For all of the possible implications some Bible scholars may unfold from Adam’s naming of the beasts, the advantageous use of language is perhaps most profound. By naming, Adam at least created an efficient nominal tool—even though we need not concede that so limiting the scope of his project is of philosophical necessity. God, creator of every beast, then blessed the man’s work of naming. “And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” (Gen. 2:19 ESV)

Nothing reproves the narrow-mindedness of one century quite like the keen sensibilities of another. Our contemporary milieu is truly enlightened by Edwards. Many Christians today would have us believe that because distinctive titles tend towards marginalization—e.g. “Protestant,” or invoke proscriptive paradigms of theology—e.g. “Baptist,” they ought to on that account be discontinued. In his forward to Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004), John R. Franke writes of the modern surge towards ecumenicism, “Many of these developments can be traced to the failure of modernity’s categories and paradigms to recognize the social and cultural diversity of the human experience. This failure has prompted the emergence of postmodern theory with its critique of certain, objective, universal knowledge and its quest to construct new forms of thought in the aftermath of modernity.” The very first thing this postmodern theory attempts to cripple is the commonsense use of language used to name aggregations. It is instructive for contemporary Christian thinkers who are disinclined to postmodern theory to observe how Edwards, centuries removed from our time and writing during the zenith of Franke and McLaren’s oh-so-regrettable Enlightenment, gently dismantles this mindset.

I think that one quote from Edwards which deserves our full review comes from his closing paragraph: “Of all kinds of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important. As religion is the great business for which we are created, and on which our happiness depends; and as religion consists in an intercourse between ourselves and our Maker, and so has its foundation in God’s nature and ours, and in the relation that God and we stand to each other; therefore a true knowledge of both must be needful, in order to true religion. But the knowledge of ourselves consists chiefly in right apprehensions concerning those two chief faculties of our nature, the understanding and the will.” (xi, ¶2)

It seems to me that this quote would stand well as a foundation statement for a Christian philosophy of education.

One last observation from the preface stems from this quote: “. . . if the reader be disposed to pass his censure on what I have written, [I request that] I may be fully and patiently heard, and well attended to, before I am condemned. However, this is what I would humbly ask of my readers, together with the prayers of all sincere lovers of truth, that I may have much of that Spirit which Christ promised his disciples, which guides into all truth: and that the blessed and powerful influences of this Spirit would make truth victorious in the world.” (xii, ¶1)

My observation is this: to engage in a scientific inquiry concerning the human soul is not to somehow resist the work of the Spirit but rather to humbly labor with the will of God. Too often rational inquiry is, in our branch of Christendom, deemed a pursuit at odds with the fruit of godliness. I am inclined to see the opposite posture as a godless one: where inquiry itself is shunned for fear that it must necessarily oppose divine revelation. It seems to me that we ought rather to pray with Edwards, “that I may have much of that Spirit which Christ promised his disciples, which guides into all truth: and that the blessed and powerful influences of this Spirit would make truth victorious in the world,” remembering that this is the starting point of rational inquiry!

~Reepicheep~