To be frank, I have never been attracted to the theology of American Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards. Perhaps because of his historical and geographic situation, he always seems to exist in an eddy of history, a backwater, protected and immune from the force of the enrushing early Enlightenment and its theological questions and challenges. Plus, in matters spiritual or otherwise, the guy was a hard ass. There, I said it.
Nevertheless, this quotation from Sam Storms, the author of Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections says I'm no doubt badly mistaken. In an interview printed in Crossway's publicity publication, The Book Report, Storms says:
[Edwards] saw everything in the light of the glory and power and majesty of God, from the smallest of spiders to the most expansive of galaxies. Everything exists by virtue of God's incessant infusion of life and energy. Everything exists to reflect the glory and splendor of its Creator. Everything exists to draw us to God so that we might glorify him by finding satisfaction in all that he is for us in Jesus.
Let's face it. In the wake of a personal openness to science, I'm hunting around to see what models theology can provide. And though I am not at all interested in adopting process theology, a direction which, in my opinion, gives the store away in exchange for contemporary ideological legitimacy, Edwards "incessant infusion" hints at possibility.
Jonathan Edwards; Sam Storms; process theology; science and religion; theology; metaphysics
Thom,
ReplyDeleteEdward's gets a bad rap for being too harsh. You could say he underestimated people's ability to come to faith without having the threat of damnation thrust under their nose, but you can't argue that his preaching was effective and helped launch one of the greatest revivals in American history (whatever qualms we may share with the critics of that day).
But anyway, Edwards was a top-notch theologian whose writings on Aesthetics are great. One of my professors at Sewanee (now at General Seminary, Bill Danaher) wrote his dissertation on Edwards and published it in a book entitled "The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards." I think you'd find it interesting. Here it is on Google book search: The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards
Great stuff for anyone interested in sin, virtue etc...
Is there a connection between incessant infusion and sacramental theology and incarnational ecclesiology? In what ways is the Spirit in church and sacrament alike and different from the Spirit as it upholds the created world and directs it toward its eschatological end?
ReplyDeleteCalvin also talked about this infusion, placing it right at the feet of the Spirit. (It's somewhere in Book 1 of the Institutes.)
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