Introduction
By Egbert C. Smyth
In 1851, the Rev. Dr. Bushnell called attention to a supposed manuscript of Jonathan Edwards. “I very much desired,” he remarked, “in my exposition of the Trinity, to present some illustrations from a manuscript dissertation of President Edwards on that subject. Only a few months ago I first heard of the existence of such a manuscript. It was described to me as ’ an a priori argument for the Trinity, the ’ contents of which would excite a good deal of surprise if communicated to the public. The privilege of access to the manuscript is declined to me, as I understand, on the ground of ‘the nature of the contents, As this manuscript has just now come into the possession of Dr. Dwight, of Portland, it is to be hoped that, unless some restrictions on the use of it have descended as a trust from the author, he will disburden himself as soon as may be of the very important responsibility, so faithfully exercised, for a whole century now past, by persons not more competent, certainly, than Jonathan Edwards, to guard the orthodoxy of this very distinguished name.”1
In the International Review for July, 1880, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes alludes apparently to the same manuscript in the following terms: “The writer is informed on unquestionable authority that there is, or was, in existence, a manuscript of Edwards, in which his views appear to have undergone a great change in the direction of Arianism, or of Sabellianism, which is an old-fashioned Unitarianism, or, at any rate, show a defection from his former standard of Orthodoxy, and which its custodians, thinking it best to be as wise as serpents in order that they might continue harmless as doves, have considered it their duty to withhold from the public. If any of our friends at Andover can inform us what are the facts about this manuscript, such information would be gratefully received by many inquirers, who would be rejoiced to know that so able and so good a man lived to be emancipated from the worse than heathen conceptions which had so long enchained his powerful but crippled understanding.”
The accomplished editor of the Hartford Courant was stirred by these intimations to publish an article on “The Injustice to Jonathan Edwards,” which has 1 Christ in Theology, p. vi.
been widely noticed, and has excited much inquiry. After referring to alleged editorial alterations of the text in the published works of Edwards, the writer continues: “But this matter is a light one compared to the existing suppression referred to by Dr. Holmes. If Jonathan Edwards changed his views in regard to these awful aspects of the future of mankind,... justice to him no less than to the cause of truth requires a publication of that change. Dr. Holmes makes inquiry for the reported suppressed manuscript of ’ our friends at Andover, It is time that this inquiry were made more pointedly.
“It has long been matter of private information that Professor Edwards A. Park, of Andover, had in his possession an unpublished manuscript of Edwards of considerable extent, perhaps two-thirds as long as his treatise on the Will. As few have ever seen this manuscript, its contents are only known by vague reports. Its importance may be exaggerated, although it is impossible to exaggerate the interest, one would say, of an unpublished work of Edwards. It is said that it contains a departure from his published views on the Trinity, and a modification of the view of original sin. One account of it says that the manuscript leans toward Sabellianism, and that it even approaches Pelagianism. In the recollection of some, the title of it is ‘Divine Charity, or ‘Love of God.’1... But it matters little what this manuscript contains.... Everything that Edwards wrote has a value either as literature or as doctrine. ... If the importance of the suppressed manuscript is exaggerated in regard to its reported relaxing of uncompromising doctrines, the only way to show this is to publish it. If it is what it is reported to be, its publication is demanded by common morality.”2
The reports embodied in these statements have met with a general denial of their correctness from the Rev. Tryon Edwards, D.D., and also from the editor of The Bihliotheca Sacra. The latter testifies: “The popular rumors regarding his [President Edwards’s] changes of theological opinion are many of them utterly false, many of them singularly exaggerated, and all unreliable. So far as his manuscripts have been examined by the present writer, the views of Edwards on the Trinity are no more inclined to Unitarianism than were the views of Augustine and his followers, of Thomas Aquinas and the Doctors of the Roman Church through
1 President Edwards’s work on “Charity,” or “Christian Love,” was published, with an Introduction by the Rev. Dr. Tryon Edwards, in 185 1, and* has passed through numerous editions. It has also been republished in England.
2 Hartford Courant, June 23. I quote from a reprint in the Boston Daily Advertiser, June 25.
the Middle Ages. The present writer, having heard the popular rumors, has been surprised at the fact that he has found so little which could have suggested, and so much refuting, the statement that Edwards ever wavered. in adopting any of the essential doctrines of Calvinism.“1 Dr. Edwards, in a note to The Congregationalist? adopts these statements respecting President Edwards’s adherence to Calvinism and Trinitarianism from “a pretty thorough examination of all the manuscripts” deposited with him as trustee and now in the hands of Professor Park. In a previous communication to the Boston Evening Transcript, Dr. Edwards also says:” Personally I know of no suppression of any opinions of Edwards, much less of any omission or change of expression that would modify, in the least, his well-known theological or doctrinal views. d
To these emphatic disclaimers I am able to add a more specific refutation by publishing the manuscript to which Dr. Bushnell referred, and which appears to have occasioned, through erroneous and exaggerated reports, the present misunderstanding respecting its author’s opinions.
It is not, as Dr. Bushnell supposed, an autograph,
1 The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1880, p. 592.
2 The Congregationalism July 21, 1880.
8 Evening Transcript, July 8, 1880.
but a copy. It is, however, a very early and trustworthy one, having also a special value in the disappearance of the original, perhaps at the time this copy was made nearly a century ago.
I received it, about fifteen years since, from the late Rev. William T. Dwight, D.D., to whom it was bequeathed by his brother, Rev. Dr. Sereno E. Dwight, author of a well-known biography of President Edwards, and the latest editor of his collected works. The manuscript is in a chirography unlike that of any of the copyists known to have been employed in connection with Dr. Dwight’s edition; and the paper, also, is different. It appears to have belonged to a manuscript book prepared for publication. The first page is numbered 573, and begins with a paragraph printed on page 466 of the Miscellaneous Observations, published at Edinburgh in 1793. Then comes this direction,
1 Dr. Erskine, in a Preface to this work, states that “Dr. Edwards, of Newhaven, has not grudged the labour of transcribing this volume of miscellanies, which, if it prove acceptable, will be followed by more, as the Doctor’s health and leisure permit.” In an unpublished letter from Dr. Edwards, addressed to the Rev. Dr. John Erskine, Edinburgh, and dated New Haven, Feb. 8, 1787, there is an allusion to “packets of May 25 and March 8, 1785,” and the following statement: “In consequence of the communication by Mr. Hart of part of your letters to him, expressing your confidence that there would be little difficulty in getting published my father’s practical tracts, on April 7, 1786, I sent to Mr.
written, as Dr. W. T. Dwight supposed, and comparison confirms, by Dr. Edwards, son of the first President: “What follows to p, 588 not to be printed, but preserved.” On page 588, at the close of the treatise now printed, the manuscript reads: “To these Observations on the Sonship of Christ I shall add some Reasons against Dr. Watts’ s notion of the Pre-existence of Christ’s Human Soul. 1. God’s manner with all creatures is to appoint them a trial,” &c, proceeding thus as in the Edinburgh edition, p. 409, except that the printing commences with the word “Reasons.” This change, however, conforms to the manuscript as it now stands, for a line of erasure is drawn through the words, “To these Observations on the Sonship of Christ I shall add some,” as though the manuscript had thus been revised for the printer at the time when Dr. Edwards appears to have written the direction I have quoted. It is not unlikely that when it was decided not to
Hyslup to be forwarded to you the MS. sermons which I transcribed about the beginning of the late war.” One volume of sermons thus transcribed was published in Hartford, 1 781; another in Edinburgh, 1788; a third in 1789. The Miscellaneous Observations appeared in 1793; Miscellaneous Remarks, in 1796. The allusions above given show that Dr. Edwards himself transcribed many of his father’s manuscripts. As the work advanced he probably had assistance. Copying for the printer was indispensable, on account of the illegibility of many of the manuscripts, especially the later ones.
i o Introduction.
print (with the exception of a few sentences) pages S73-588 of the manuscript book, they were taken out, and kept in this country, and thus have been preserved. On the margin are cancelled the number 1062, over against the title of the paper now printed, and the number 1174 against that of the observations on Dr. Watts’s theory. So far as I have observed, the peculiarities of spelling * appear in undoubted autographs. From correspondence in my possession I learn of another copy, endorsed by a granddaughter of President Edwards as a treatise by him. This manuscript the correspondence recognizes as belonging to Dr. W. T. Dwight, and as about to be sent to him, but I have not found it among his papers. When, to these external facts, is added the internal evidence, the proof of the genuineness of this treatise will not, I presume, be questioned.2
The numbering referred to above, and other indications, show that this treatise belongs to the class of papers published under the title “Miscellaneous Observations.” Dr. Hopkins, President Edwards’s earliest biographer, remarks of these miscellanies, that they were written,” not with any design that they should ever be published in that form, but for the satisfaction and improvement of his [their auth-
1 These are retained in the print.
a See Appendix, Note A.
or’s] own mind, and that he might retain the thoughts which appeared to him worth preserving.” Why, after being carefully copied, apparently for publication, the treatise now printed was held back by the son, is, so far as I am aware, purely a matter of conjecture. Its “lack of orthodoxy”1 has recently been suggested as the reason. But the treatise excludes such a supposition, for it is not unorthodox. Nor is it at all probable that Dr. Edwards would have objected, on other grounds, to the theory of a “Social Trinity” which underlies its argument. His direction that the manuscript be preserved indicates that he attached some value to it,2 and he seems, as already noticed, to have thought of publishing it. If, in these circumstances, any conjecture is admissible, it would appear to be one suggested by Dr. Erskine’s statement) that Dr. Edwards was solicited “to collect and print such part of those manuscripts [viz., the” Observations “] as might be generally useful.” It is quite possible that being invited to make a selection from his father’s papers or “practical tracts,” for such an end, he doubted, upon reflection, whether the present paper was properly included, and so withheld it,
1 The Independent, July 15, 1880.
2 In a letter to Rev. Mr. Ryland, Jr., he says that the Miscellanies are “the most complete and important” of his father’s manuscripts.
directing at the same time that it be preserved. It should be borne in mind that there is no reason whatever to suppose that President Edwards left it for publication, or that the son could have thought he was “suppressing” any opinions of his father which he was called upon to divulge. At the same time, it should be added, the manuscript has been transmitted without restriction as to its being made public. There is no evidence that Dr. Edwards intended to withhold it permanently. Dr. Sereno E. Dwight appears to have reviewed it for publication, together with many others of the miscellanies which he prepared for the press but did not print. His brother regarded himself as at liberty to publish it, and so bequeathed it.
In deciding to make it public, I am influenced by still other considerations than the desire to correct any existing misconceptions. Its authorship, contents, and character are stronger reasons for its appearance, though in other circumstances this might well be delayed in the hope of a still more complete edition of President Edwards’s writings than has as yet been secured. These reasons, also, are quite independent, or at least in large measure so, of the value which may be put upon special lines of reasoning it adopts.
Though a private paper, and not written for publication, it is not, as sometimes represented, a crude and hasty production, nor an early one. President Edwards left above 1400 miscellaneous observations. The number of the present one is 1062, which indicates a somewhat late origin. It will be at once recognized as an elaborately reasoned discussion.
Careful students of Edwards’s published writings may have wondered that they contain so little directly on the subject of the Trinity, or on questions pertaining to Christology. The Observations now printed indicate that these great themes were not neglected by him, and that he brought to bear upon them his maturest powers. New evidence is thus afforded of the range of his thinking.2
As before noticed, the discussion pursued keeps strictly within the bounds of orthodoxy.
If this conformity to the generally accepted standards of belief were simply a matter of inheritance, it would be of little account. But President Edwards was no mere traditionalist. His Observations are characterized by great independence, and even boldness of reasoning and freedom of dissent. If they still recognize certain limits of belief, this fact
1 The first fifty-two numbers were designated by letters of the alphabet, single and double. Probably these are included in the total estimate. In either case, 1062 really represents the number 1 114, reckoning from the beginning.
2 See, also, the extracts from unpublished manuscripts in the Appendix.
affords a valuable testimony to the legitimacy and authority of such restrictions.
The Church doctrine of the Trinity affirms that there are, in the Godhead, three distinct hypostases or subsistences, — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, — each possessing one and the same divine nature, though in a different manner.
. Within the limits of this article of faith, quite different modes of statement have obtained, now inclining more to Tritheistic forms, now to a less definite assertion of hypostatic properties. Some, especially in later times, have contented themselves with simply affirming eternal distinctions, the ground of the Trinitarian revelation, and have deemed it unwise to venture upon more explicit statements. So long as, on the one side, the Unity of Essence has been held, and, on the other, the reality of immanent or ontological distinctions, the Church doctrine has not been infringed upon.
In considering the following Observations, it should be remembered that they are not, as Dr. Bushnell and others appear to have supposed, a treatise on the subject of the Trinity. A dissertation having such scope would necessarily consider a question nowhere touched upon in them, — that of the relation of the three Persons of the Trinity 1 Cf. Dorner, Ckristliche Giaubenslehre, I. 367.
to the divine Unity. Other topics, also wholly unnoticed, would inevitably be considered.
It is also obvious that the discussion, though suggestive at many points of wider relations, turns chiefly to a single aspect of the subject. President Edwards, in common with the Puritan theologians of his day, and earlier divines, gave prominence to the conception that the work of Redemption is an execution of a divine covenant. In the remarks under consideration, he writes out privately thoughts and reasonings which he had elaborated respecting the parties to this covenant; its relation to an agreement entered into between the Persons of the Trinity with reference to manifesting the divine glory; and as to the conformity of this divine economy to the natural order of subsistence. The range and scope of the discussion are remarkable, and also its logical power, whatever may be thought of the sufficiency of its premises; but it would obviously be going too far to regard it as designed to maintain, or even to state, the doctrine of the Trinity.
This fragmentary character of the paper being recognized, it may still be thought that some of its author’s statements are tritheistic, particularly his maintenance that the covenant of Redemption was contracted solely between two Persons of the Trinity. It will be noticed, however, that this statement is at once accompanied by others, which show an adherence to the accepted doctrine of the Unity of God in counsel and work, as well as in being. That Edwards held to the unity of the divine nature appears, moreover, distinctly in the paper which, in the manuscript book to which I have referred, immediately succeeds the one now printed, and is indicated by its number as written not long subsequently. It speaks of “the union of several divine persons in one essence,” and interprets Deut. vi. 4 as designed to “guard the people against imagining that there was a plurality of Essences or Beings among whom they were to divide their affections and respect.”
Modern thought on this subject, so far as it undertakes the difficult task of progressive dogmatic construction, is influenced by its apprehension of Absolute Personality. God is the personal Absolute, — not only one Essence, but also one Person. And, from this point of view, the Trinitarian distinctions, in themselves regarded, are not three persons, in the modern sense of this word, though each is in the highest and fullest sense personal, as possessing the one divine nature, and in and through the other hypostases. This, however, is no new doctrine, but rather the legitimate development of what has been held from the beginning, an adjustment of its statement to the clearer conceptions which have been gained of Personality.
In other respects, the orthodoxy of the paper now published is at once apparent. The Sonship of the second Person in the Trinity implies no dependence on the will of the Father, and no inferiority of nature. It is eternal. In adhering to this doctrine, President Edwards, it is believed, is in accord with the results of the latest and most scholarly interpretation of the Scriptures, and with some of the most important phases of recent religious thought and life. His conception, moreover, of the relation of the Incarnate Word to the Church in its state of final perfection and blessedness, his discrimination between the eternal Mediation of the Son, and His Humiliation for the sake of man’s Redemption, and his recognition of the Incarnation as at once conditioned by human sin, and founded in a divine Economy instituted for the purpose of self-revelation and self-communication, are anticipations of some of the most valuable contributions of modern Christology, and indications of his peculiar genius. It is also something worth noting, that a mind so reverent and profound, and so controlled by what he accepted as the teaching of Scripture, did not regard the subject of the Trinity, in its ontological relations, as a mere blank to human thought.
With these statements and comments, perhaps already too protracted, this little treatise of President Edwards is given to the public. If our liberal friends who have recently manifested so hopeful an interest in the opinions of “so good a man” shall be led by it to a fresh perusal of his “Observations” already published, and shall also be stimulated to the study of the papers, which, in the pages of The Bibliotheca Sacra, are soon to be put within their reach, they and we may together have occasion to rejoice that “he being dead yet speaketh.”
E. C. S.
Andover Theological Seminary,
August, 1880.