The Hermeneutics of Jonathan
Edwards
Samuel T. Logan, Jr.
Within the scope of one twelve-month period, at the very heart of the last century, America was presented, in artistic form, with two archetypal examples of the hermeneutical problem. These expressions perfectly summarized the intellectual concerns of that period of history which F. O. Matthiessen has called the "American Renaissance." They also demonstrate the fabric of the American consciousness for the preceding two hundred years and they point toward its gradual disintegration during the following century.
The first example constitutes the artistic statement of purpose in Nathaniel
Hawthorne's classic novel,
The object that most drew my attention, …was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded. There were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced; so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left…. This rag of scarlet cloth, …on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. …how it was to be worn, or what rank, honor, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which…I saw little hope of solving. And yet it strangely interested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside. Certainly, there was some deep meaning in it, most worthy of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the analysis of my mind."1
Indeed it did interest him! And the meaning of the scarlet letter has interested thousands, perhaps millions of Americans--and others--ever since.
But what is important here is first, Hawthorne's assumption about the nature
of reality and second, his response to reality given his assumption. That little
rag of scarlet cloth was not an autonomous, isolated datum of experience. It was
meaningful--full of meaning--and, as Hawthorne tells the tale, he knew this
immediately. The scarlet letter pointed beyond itself to a greater reality of
which it was an integral part. And Hawthorne wrote a novel in response to this
fact.
Within one year of the publication of
"Nantucket market! Hoot!" cries Ahab. "Hark ye yet again,--the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask."2
In each event, Ahab claims, in each event in all human experience
there lurks some meaning, some significance which the questioning mind must
discover. That, Melville seems to be suggesting, is indeed the goal of human
experience. To refuse the voyage, to ignore the lurking meaning is to squander
those attributes which constitute man's unique potential. And again, the nature
of reality--what we might call ontology--provides the philosophical basis
for Ahab's and Melville's quest. Melville describes an event later in
A white whale and a rag of scarlet cloth--fascinating--perhaps--but what have
they to do with Jonathan Edwards? The connection becomes clear as one digs in
the soil of early American intellectual history for the roots of Hawthorne's and
Melville's hermeneutical concerns. Both Charles Feidelson in
It is a matter of ontology. If God is absolutely sovereign, then no event in human history is uncaused--all existence rests upon the will of God, which will enter therefore into the fabric of everything it causes. Items of experience do not exist in an ontological vacuum.
Such an ontology has clear epistemological implications. Because events ontologically contain meaning (perhaps it would be more accurate to say that events are meaning--cf. Psalm 19:1, 2), the proper response to those events is epistemological. Events, things, experiences become a kind of language through which the will of our sovereign God is expressed--these events, things, and experiences should thus be handled hermeneutically, unless we are to concede that God's will is insignificant. But it is only the Calvinistic world view, with its focus on God's absolute sovereignty, which offers this epistemological opportunity, which makes this hermeneutical demand.
Both Hawthorne and Melville felt the demand--Melville felt it because of his Dutch Calvinistic background and Hawthorne felt it because of his New England Puritan ancestry. But feeling it and handling it are two different activities--if reality is meaningful, then precisely what do I do to deal with that meaning appropriately.
As a Calvinistic New Englander, Jonathan Edwards helped to lay that bit of scarlet cloth before Hawthorne. As one of the greatest and most influential thinkers America has produced, Edwards helped to perpetuate the intellectual universe within which a great white whale could exist and could threaten Melville.
Edwards' thought is both representative and pioneering--representative of the Calvinistic world view with its hermeneutical implications and pioneering in its detailed, innovative handling of those implications. Two of the greatest works of literary art produced by Americans focus explicitly on the hermeneutical problem. Jonathan Edwards, one hundred years earlier, suggested a way of handling that problem, whenever it appears, which may provide significant guidance for hermeneutics in the late twentieth century. And Edwards' distinctive contribution to hermeneutics must be viewed against the background of earlier Puritan hermeneutical practice.
Examples of the Puritan hermeneutical mind at work are easy to provide. John Winthrop, the brilliant governor of Massachusetts Bay, wrote the following in his journal on August 15, 1648:
The synod met at Cambridge by adjournment from the (4) [June] last. Mr. Allen of Dedham preached out of Acts 15, a very godly, learned, and particular handling of near all the doctrines and applications concerning that subject with a clear discovery and refutation of such errors, objections, and scruples as had been raised about it by some young heads in the country. It fell out, about the midst of his sermon, there came a snake into the seat, where many of the elders sate behind the preacher. It came in at the door where people stood thick upon the stairs. Divers of the elders shifted from it, but Mr. Thomson, one of the elders of Braintree, (a man of much faith,) trode upon the head of it, and so held it with his foot and staff with a small pair of grains, until it was killed. This being so remarkable, and nothing falling out but by divine providence, it is out of doubt, the Lord discovered somewhat of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil; the synod, the representative of the churches of Christ in New England. The devil had formerly and lately attempted their dissolution; but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and crushed his head.3
That snake was thus Winthrop's Moby Dick or his scarlet letter--with one crucial distinction. The snake's meaning did not evade the analysis of Winthrop's mind as the bit of scarlet cloth evaded Hawthorne's. For Winthrop, in a word, there were hermeneutics but no hermeneutical problem. Since nothing does fall out but by divine providence, the snake was meaningful, and Winthrop apparently discovered that meaning easily and surely.
But how? What methodology leads to such swift and certain interpretive judgments?
Perry Miller, whose writings on the Puritans must still be the starting point for any serious student of New England Calvinism, suggests that the answer to this question might be found in the logical system of the French theologian Petrus Ramus. Ramus claimed that his logic actually corresponded to the exact way that things were both in the present temporal world and in the non-temporal eternal world. To grasp the idea was to grasp the thing. Thus, as Miller summarizes:
The argument was the thing, or the name of the thing, or the mental conception of the thing, all at once. The charm of the system in Puritan eyes was that it annihilated the distance from the object to the brain, or made possible an epistemological leap across the gap in the twinkling of an eye, with an assurance of footing beyond the possibility of a metaphysical slip.4
The development of Ramist logic into specifically theological terms came to be known as "technologia." God had planted certain seminal principles in the mind of every individual, and as the individual experienced the world around him, these principles were nourished and grew. These principles, such as color, were exact duplications of elements within the material world and within the mind of God. Both the seminal principles and the empirical experiences were thus described as direct paths of access into the nature of God Himself. This may be explained in terms of the method by which God created the world. The act of creation was a two-fold process: God first formed in His mind certain specific ideas (again, such as color) which He then objectified by creating material reality. To grasp the objects, to name them, is to grasp a direct emanation from the mind of God. The point is that to grasp the meaning of words is considered equivalent to grasping the very mind of God. All of nature is seen as a copy of ideas in the mind of God, and language is a photographic copy of that copy. To use language is, therefore, to construct a reality which perfectly mirrors the very mind of God.5
The implications of such an understanding of language and reality are enormous. In the first place, language is natural--that is, the relationship between a word and the reality to which it is transparent is inherent and internal. This means that the process of knowledge is unimpeded by any insurmountable barrier--the path to correct understanding lies wide open to anyone who will simply apply his intellectual muscles to the word or event before him. This is, of course, an oversimplification, and very few New England Puritans would explicitly argue for the possibility of true knowledge apart from the enlightening and involving power of the Holy Spirit. But the fact is that Ramist logic did develop into technologia (with the help of William Ames) and that technologia as a theological system did produce such hermeneutical certainty as that suggested by the quotation from John Winthrop. Obviously, Ramist logic and the technologia which developed out of it assumed a specific ontology and this ontology, this structure of reality, not only made reality meaningful but also made discovery of that reality a rather simple task.
Such "discovery" was, on the Ramist scheme, largely an intellectual activity and consequently, hermeneutics in early Puritan thought was almost exclusively a logical exercise. What one discovers when one analyzes either experience or Scripture may have practical implications, but the primary focus is on what, for example, resides in the mind of God.
The Puritans, as a rule, did not write novels--rather they gave vent to their hermeneutical interests in sermons. Ola Winslow's description of the role sermons played in that society is striking.
Sermons, thousands of them. Two per week, one hundred and four per annum from every minister until his last earthly Sunday. No sermon was less than two hours long and usually it was longer. 'Do not pinch them with scanty sermons', said the ordination preacher among his advices to the young incumbent. There was no danger. 'We know not how to conclude', said one of the long-winded himself…. So confessed and exonerated, they kept right on turning the glass. Urian Oakes had once been seen to turn it four times and there were others equally generous.6
In spite of what the new social historians are saying about the fabric of seventeenth-century New England life, the dominant and determinative role of sermons in American Puritan experience cannot be overemphasized. And just as ontology determines hermeneutics, hermeneutics determines homiletics. That is, an individual's hermeneutical methodology--the way in which he conceives of and carries out his task as interpreter--this establishes the form and the style of the sermons which he preaches. Certainly it did in seventeenth-century New England.
Technologia as a hermeneutical methodology produced preaching in what has been called, by Perry Miller, Ola Winslow, and many others "The Plain Style." Miller points out that preaching during the early years of the Puritan establishment was characterized by clarity, logical divisions and proofs, and thorough explanation of the text, followed by a full list of "uses" or applications of the doctrine taught in the text. The basic purpose of the plain style was to summarize, in logical and propositional form, the doctrine presented in the specific text.
That the "Plain Style," as Miller describes it, was the predominant form in New England preaching is clear from a study of primary source materials. In a sermon entitled "Swines and Goats" (first published in 1654), John Cotton provides an excellent example of the type of linguistic usage that Miller has been analyzing. He begins the sermon in typical Ramist manner by dividing all men into two categories: Righteous and Wicked; all wicked men into two classes: Notoriously Wicked and Hypocrites; and all hypocrites into two sorts: Swine and Goats.7 The remainder of the sermon consists of a "meticulous logical and rigorously organized" investigation of the precise characteristics of these types with minute, Scriptural backing for each statement.8
A second example of the plain style is provided by Increase Mather's sermon "A Discourse Concerning the Uncertainty of the Time of Men." Delivered at Harvard College in 1698, this sermon dealt with the tragic deaths of two undergraduates just a few days earlier, and Mather had ample opportunity to arouse emotions and thereby to modify Ramist hermeneutical methodology. Instead Mather begins his sermon as he would a philosophy lecture:
The Doctrine at present before us, is, 'That for the most part the Miserable Children of Men, know not their time.' There are three things for us here briefly to Enquire into. (1) What Times they are which Men know not? (2) How it does appear that they are Ignorant thereof. (3) The Reason why they are kept in Ignorance of their Time.9
The remainder of the sermon is organized scholastically, with the three questions being carefully considered and thoroughly answered in precise theological terminology. Mather seems almost, to be suggesting by his homiletical style that his hearers can correctly interpret this tragedy simply by using their rational faculties. Surely he would not have subscribed directly to such an heretical position, but nevertheless, his preaching (and that of Oakes, Cotton, and others) helped to move New England Puritanism in this direction.
But by 1740, homiletical practice had so changed from the Plain Style that Alan Heimert can describe the situation as follows:
The evangelical minister spoke to an audience that was apparently persuaded that the Holy Spirit was more a rhetorician than a logician…. Moreover, Scripture seems to function in their discourses not as a source of doctrine but as something of a verbal armory with which to make truths 'affecting' and compelling.10
Before seeking the causes of this shift, let us be sure that we recognize it as a shift, not as a complete repudiation of previous ideas. Heimert is pointing out that Calvinistic preaching after 1740 was often more "affecting" than it had been earlier; he is not saying that after 1740 logic and doctrine disappeared altogether. With this in mind, we may proceed to examine those aspects of Edwardsean homiletical practice and hermeneutical theory which distinguished him from the earlier Puritans.
Edwards was one of the leading preachers and theologians of the Great Awakening--as such, he participated in--even led--the homiletical revolution which Heimert describes. The Plain Style was abandoned in favor of the rhetoric of sensation, and in sermon after sermon, Edwards displays the new pulpit oratory.
His most famous sermon is "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and there is no reason why we should not begin a study of the rhetoric of sensation there. In terms of subject matter, the sermon may not be "typical Edwards"--but then few preachers expound the intimate horrors of hell so often that such a sermon would be typical. In terms of style, which is our primary concern, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is typically Edwardsean. Listen as Edwards warns the sinner of the dangers he is courting:
Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen…. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. --That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up….
* * * * *
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.11
Listen to the language--what a difference from the Plain Style! Surely this is the rhetoric of sensation.
Such remains Edwards' rhetoric even when his subject changes. The following selection is from a funeral sermon--compare this sermon to the one preached by Increase Mather on the occasion of the drowning accident in 1698.
We cannot continue always in these earthly tabernacles. They are very frail, and will soon decay and fall; and are continually liable to be overthrown by innumerable means. Our souls must soon leave them, and go into the eternal world. O, how infinitely great will be the privilege and happiness of those, who, at that time shall go to be with Christ in his glory, in the manner that has been represented! The privilege of the twelve disciples was great, in being so constantly with Christ as his family, in his state of humiliation…. But is not that privilege infinitely greater which has now been spoken of: the privilege of being with Christ in heaven, where he sits on the throne, as the King of angels, and the God of the universe; shining forth as the Sun of that world of glory; there to dwell in the full, constant, and everlasting view of his beauty and brightness;--there most freely and intimately to converse with him, and fully to enjoy his love, as his friends and brethren; there to share with him in the infinite pleasure and joy which he has in the enjoyment of his Father--there to sit with him on his throne, to reign with him in the possession of all things…and to join with him in joyful songs of praise to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God forever and ever!12
Surely Edwards is, as Heimert claimed, seeking to make the biblical doctrines of hell and heaven affecting and compelling.
But why? What lay behind this homiletical shift? First it must be noted that Edwards was working with the same world view that caused Winthrop to find meaning in a serpent and Melville to seek meaning in a whale. One of the clearest and most definitive expressions of Edwards' Calvinistic ontology is found in his study of the Freedom of the Will, first published in 1754. There Edwards argues with rigorous precision that "nothing ever comes to pass without a cause. What is self-existent," he continues, "must be from eternity…but as to all things that begin to be, they are not self-existent, and therefore must have some foundation of their existence without themselves."13 That foundation, Edwards goes on to argue, provides not just existence but also meaning. Specifically, in the context of this treatise, Edwards is concerned to show that the Arminian notion of the freedom of the Will is mistaken, that God is indeed the author of salvation, that when an individual chooses Christ, that act means God has chosen this individual for his own.
Human acts are, therefore, meaningful precisely because they are grounded in divine sovereignty. Without that kind of ultimate ground, there would be no ultimate meaning--in acts of the will or in any other event of human experience. With that ground, meaning becomes not just potential but actual. God's will did, in the words of the Westminster Confession, ordain whatsoever comes to pass, and consequently the hermeneutical task becomes possible and necessary.
So for Edwards, hermeneutics was as crucial an activity as it was for Winthrop, but still there is the shift from the Plain Style to the Rhetoric of Sensation which we noted in Edwards' preaching. Of what hermeneutical significance was that shift? It was of the greatest significance for it signaled a major change in the very definition of hermeneutics.
Edwards' philosophical mentor was not Petrus Ramus as much as it was John Locke. It is true, of course, that many modern scholars strongly dispute Miller's rather facile identification of Lockean theory with Edwardsean practice (and some of the inadequacies of Miller's approach will be discussed shortly), but I do think that, to the degree that Edwards consciously had a theory of language, it was very probably derived from Locke more than from any other single source.14 Basically, Locke rejected the "natural" theory of language which informed the Plain Style. In place of the natural theory, Locke developed a symbolic theory in which words were taken to be artificial inventions established by social convention. In other words, social convention merely decreed that a certain word was to be linked to a certain sense impression so that any given word refers to a discrete sense impression. Since it is the sense impressions and not the arbitrary linguistic symbols that are the basic reality, the purpose of language (whether written or spoken) must be to conjure up those basic impressions. Locke used the term "simple idea" to describe the original sense impressions and claimed that a person has touch with reality only as he deals with these simple ideas.15 It was with this kind of theoretical foundation that Edwards began his ministry in Northhampton under his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. From the very beginning, Edwards strove, in his preaching, to avoid using words which did not have any concrete ideas connected with them. While he accepted the validity of abstract terms, he felt that preaching which used these terms exclusively or even predominantly was a denial of life and a failure to come to grips with reality. In his preaching, therefore, he attempted to use words in such a way as to bring the sense impressions originally associated with those words directly before his congregation. He even went beyond Locke in claiming that words could operate as direct psychological stimuli without any abstract ideas or speculative content being involved. In his best known work, Religious Affections, he clearly and decisively described the regenerated person as one who can "sense" the wonder of God in the world all around, rather than as one who can grasp the mind of God by analyzing Scripture texts.
Edwards reacted strongly against the Plain Style and against the prevailing rationalistic, over-intellectualized faith which it tended to engender. Edwards sought more than anything to make Christ a totally engaging Person for his people. But this is not to say that Edwards repudiated logic or that he ignored the importance of propositional understanding. Again the Religious Affections serves as a model. Carefully reasoned and rigorously logical, Edwards therein presents a full-blown analysis of an essential part of the Christian life, a part which must be thoroughly and prepositionally known if the individual's spiritual life is to be full, complete, and true.
A couple of brief passages from the Religious Affection will clarify Edwards' concerns.
There is given to those that are regenerated, a new supernatural sense, that is, as it were, a certain divine spiritual taste, which is in its whole nature diverse from any former kinds of sensation of the mind, as tasting is diverse from any of the other five senses, and that something is perceived by a true saint in the exercise of this new sense of mind, in spiritual and divine things, as entirely different from anything that is perceived in them by natural men, as the sweet taste of honey is diverse from the ideas men get of honey by looking on it or feeling of it….
Holy affections are not heat without light; but evermore arise from some information of the understanding, some spiritual instruction that the mind receives, some light or actual knowledge…. Now there are many affections which don't arise from any light in the understanding. And when it is thus, it is a sure evidence that these affections are not spiritual, let them be ever so high.16
Edwards is no mystic, despite claims to the contrary. He is no Ramist either, for he believes that the hermeneutical task involves much more than mental flights into the mind of God. The meaning of any event or of any passage of Scripture is both its objective content and its significance for the personal life of the interpreter. Consequently, hermeneutics must be both active and passive in its relation to any text. That is what Edwards believed, and that is how he preached.
And he preached that way not because of John Locke. Conrad Cherry, in The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, perceptively and correctly argues that Edwards' notion of "a holy taste" is much more biblical than Lockean, as Perry Miller has claimed.
Cherry pinpoints the essential question as having to do with the origin of the new simple idea of divine truth.