Jonathan Edwards’s Reshaping Of Lockean Terminology Into A Calvinistic Aesthetic Epistemology In His “Religious Affections”

By Hyunkwan Kim

Perry Miller’s seminal works have categorized Jonathan Edwards’s overall thoughts into a wholly Lockean influence. [1] From the framework Miller established, a number of scholarly studies have been fostered. [2] However, many scholars have pointed out that Miller’s assertions went too far in identifying Edwards’s theological empiricism with Locke’s empiricism. For instance, Conrad Cherry indicated that “Miller frequently minimizes themes of Calvinist thought which were at the forefront of Edwards’s reflective concerns.” [3] George M. Marsden also pointed out that “Locke opened up exciting new ways of looking at things” regarding a number of concepts, “yet Edwards was no Lockean in any strict sense.” [4]

This line of interpretation, which aims to counterbalance Miller’s thesis, attempts to place Edwards in a broader scholastic background. Norman Fiering has rightly traced Edwards’s metaphysical background to some of Locke’s intellectual rivals such as John Norris, Bishop Berkley, and Nicolas Malebranche. [5] John E. Smith explains that “Edwards’s philosophical stance can best be defined as a subtle interweaving of the Augustinian tradition and its later outcropping in the Cambridge Platonists, with one fundamental idea derived from Locke which he made the basis of his theological empiricism.” [6]

Ongoing scholarly discussions for identifying the influences on Edwards seem to conclude that Edwards drew from various theological and philosophical streams, and developed his own theological structure by using thinkers from various traditions eclectically. When it comes to Edwards’s original concept of religious affections, however, it does seem clear that Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding is probably the best source of inspiration for Edwards’s critical concepts. According to Smith, Locke’s emphasis on “sense” and his concept of “new simple idea” are essential for understanding Edwards’s concept of religious affections. Edwards transformed Locke’s new simple idea to develop his own concept of “new spiritual sense”—the characteristic of true saints who are graciously affected, according to Edwards’s explanation. [7] Just as Locke insists that “the creation of new simple idea is beyond all human power,” Edwards also tries to explain those who have new spiritual sense cannot have given it to themselves. [8] In addition to this, Edwards’s unitary account of the human self reveals considerable similarity with that of Locke’s. [9] Both Locke and Edwards identify the understanding and will as two inseparably combined faculties of the soul. [10]

In fact, Edwards is considered to have read at least two different editions of Locke’s Essay. When Edwards was at Yale College, there was the first edition of Locke’s Essay, which was published in 1690, in the library’s Dummer collection. [11] Furthermore, in the list of his “Account Book,” a ledger in which Edwards noted books that were lent to others, there is a record that Edwards owned two volumes of The Works of John Locke, which was published in 1727, as well as the first edition of Locke’s Essay. [12] Thus, at this point at least, one might identify a certain connection between Locke and Edwards.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that Edwards was not an unimaginative follower of Locke. Rather, he refashioned Lockean terminology to develop his own theological epistemology. To be more exact, Edwards adopted Lockean terminology to explain a spiritual perception of divine beauty. Consequently, the essential meaning of Edwards’s language definitely deviates from Locke’s.

Therefore, in this context, I would like to contend that, even though Edwards adopted Lockean terminology to explain his concept of spiritual sense, his use of Lockean language effectually served to develop his peculiar aesthetical epistemology in an empirical way. To support this, I will first unpack Edwards’s use of Lockean terminology and method within his concept of religious affections, especially in relation to sense and new simple idea. Second, I will demonstrate how Edwards modified and utilized Lockean terminology for his own use and purpose, centering on new spiritual sense. Lastly, I will display how Edwards relates new spiritual sense with perceiving God’s beauty. From these, I will show that Edwards’s epistemology is not consistent with Locke’s, but is a peculiar one of his own, as well as being faithful to the Calvinistic tradition.

Continuities Between Locke And Edwards

No single sentence can better summarize John Locke’s empirical epistemology than this famous Latin phrase, Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, which means, “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in sense.” It is Locke’s explanation of the sense that provides a fundamental framework for understanding his Essay concerning Human Understanding, which he wrote “to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge.” [13] He strongly asserts that there are no innate principles in the human mind. Instead, he appeals to everyone’s own sense-experience as the sole source. [14]

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. [15]

Thus, the sense-experience occupies a pivotal position in Locke’s epistemology. To Locke, “the fountains of knowledge,” from which “all the ideas we have, or can naturally have,” are twofold: one is “depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding,” which he calls sensation; [16] the other is “the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the idea it has got,” which he calls internal sense or reflection. [17] In sum, Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding begins with an exhaustive objection to innate ideas and then proceeds to demonstrate how knowledge is derived wholly from passively conveyed ideas through the external organs of the five senses and the internal sense or reflection. [18]

According to Sang Hyun Lee, “Edwards accepted the fundamental concerns of Locke’s empiricism.” [19] Like Locke, Edwards also views knowledge as something “to be attained through a direct contact with the world.” [20] Accordingly, Edwards’s concern for the sensation as a fundamental beginning in acquiring knowledge is clearly revealed in one of his early notes:

Sensation: How far all acts of the mind are from sensation; all ideas begin from thence, and there never can be any idea, thought or act of the mind unless the mind first received some ideas from sensation, or some other way equivalent, wherein the mind is wholly passive in receiving them. [21]

This displays that Edwards also acknowledges sensation as the fundamental source in acquiring knowledge.

Edwards’s emphasis on sensation does play a significant role in buttressing his original concept of religious affections. To clarify their correlation, it would first be necessary to illustrate the meaning of “affection.” Edwards provides one proposition just before he proceeds to unpack the nature of the affections in A Treatise concerning Religious Affections: “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” [22] Edwards believes that “true religion is first a matter of having the right affections.” [23]

What, then, are the affections? Edwards defines the affections as “no other, than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.” [24] This definition requires further explanation because Edwards’s interpretation of the soul’s faculties is unique:

God has indued the soul with two faculties: one is that by which it is capable of perception and speculation…which is called the understanding. The other faculty is that by which the soul does not merely perceive and view things, but is some way inclined with respect to the things it views or considers…either as liking or disliking, pleased or displeased, approving or rejecting. This faculty is called by various names: it is sometimes called the inclination: and, as it has respect to the actions that are determined and governed by it, is called the will: and the mind, with regard to the exercises of this faculty, is often called the heart. [25]

Here, Edwards explains two faculties of the soul: the “understanding” that perceives and speculates, and the “inclination or will” that moves the soul towards or away from things.

By definition, it seems that the affection has a close relationship with the function of the will. However, it should be noted that Edwards’s explanation of the affection always comes from “the unity of the soul and self.” [26] That is, Edwards does not consider the understanding and the will as divided but as inseparably combined in the same soul; the will in no way works alone apart from the understanding. Edwards says, “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.” [27]

In other words, Edwards’s affection is definitely a dynamic concept by which a cognitive subject is vigorously oriented toward a certain external object accompanied by understanding of it. Therefore, as Edwards has observed, every affected soul “does not merely perceive and view things, but is some way inclined with respect to the things it views or considers.” [28] This concept of the unity of the soul occupies a significant role in Edwards’s affection, since Edwards imputes true religion to those who are so graciously “affected” that they have a vigorous inclination towards God, not to those who have merely a “notional understanding” on dogmatic confessions or correct doctrines. [29]

Prominent was Edwards’s example that shows the difference between notional understanding and true affection. Edwards was fond of exemplifying “tasting-sense” to describe the peculiarity of affection. For instance, having knowledge through experiencing the sweet taste of honey is far from merely knowing that honey is sweet. Likewise, having notional knowledge on the religious truths is insufficient to be a saint until he or she experiences true religious affections. As we shall see later, Edwards’s fundamental use of sense is rather different from that of Locke. However, sense-experience itself obviously constitutes a main stepping-stone for interpreting both of their thoughts. Harold Simonson even identifies the sense as “perhaps the single word which summarizes Edwards’ whole system of thought.” [30]

Another key factor that could link Locke with Edwards is the concept of simple ideas, especially the character of simple ideas when being imprinted on the human mind. Smith says that “[n]o other single feature of Locke’s philosophy was more important” to Edwards than his doctrine of “a new simple idea.” [31] According to Locke, idea is the object of thinking that comes from sensation or reflection. After defining idea, Locke divides ideas into simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas are something “each in itself uncompounded.” [32] They contain in them only “one uniform conception in the mind,” and are “not distinguishable into different ideas.” [33] Locke believed that the human mind is thoroughly passive in acquiring simple ideas, while it voluntarily creates complex ideas from combining simple ones. Locke explains how simple ideas work on the mind:

These simple ideas, when offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse to have, nor alter, when they are imprinted, nor blot them out, and make new ones itself…. As the bodies that surround us do diversely affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions, cannot avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them. [34]

Here, Locke distinctly contrasts the passivity of the mind with the activity of ideas.

However, Locke’s explanation of simple ideas leaves room for one critical question. If the mind can only perceive simple ideas passively, how could we be assured that they really reflect things themselves? Interestingly, Locke seemed aware of this difficulty, so he attempted a “recourse to a deus ex machina.” [35] Locke explains, “[S]imple ideas, which since the mind, as has been showed, can by no means make to itself, must necessarily be the product of things operating on the mind in a natural way, and producing therein those perceptions which by the wisdom and will of our Maker they are ordained and adapted to.” [36]

From this, one might see which part of Locke’s explanation on simple ideas was so attractive to Edwards. Just as Locke insists that “the creation of ‘a new simple idea’ is beyond all human power,” [37] Edwards also thinks that new spiritual sense is something infused into the minds of the saints “through the saving influences of the Spirit of God.” [38] Thus, Edwards says:

From hence it follows, that in those gracious exercises and affections which are wrought in the minds of the saints, through the saving influences of the Spirit of God, there is a new inward perception or sensation of their minds, entirely different in its nature and kind, from anything that ever their minds were the subjects of before they were sanctified. For doubtless if God by his mighty power produces something that is new, not only in degree and circumstances, but in its whole nature, and that which could be produced by no exalting, varying or compounding of what was there before, or by adding anything of the like kind; I say, if God produces something thus new in a mind, that is a perceiving, thinking, conscious thing; then doubtless something entirely new is felt, or perceived, or thought; or, which is the same thing, there is some new sensation or perception of the mind, which is entirely of a new sort, and which could be produced by no exalting, varying or compounding of that kind of perceptions or sensations which the mind had before; or there is what some metaphysicians call a new simple idea. [39]

Here, Edwards explicitly uses the term “a new simple idea” in explaining his concept of spiritual perception or new spiritual sense. According to David Laurence, the “metaphysician” in question who is being mentioned is certainly John Locke. [40]

Considering the evidences hitherto discussed, it seems to follow that, first, Lockean terminologies are employed by Edwards, and second, Locke’s empirical epistemology provides Edwards with basic insight with which he could develop his original concept of religious affections especially in relation to new spiritual sense. However, when Edwards wrote on spiritual sense, as Paul Helm has well explained, “Edwards used Lockean empiricism” not as a theory for religious experience but “as a model for religious experience.” [41] Therefore, it is also obvious that Edwards’s use of sense is clearly distinguished from that of Locke. Even though Edwards adopted from Locke “a total experimental orientation of thought,” [42] he surpassed Lockean influence in applying new simple idea to his concept of religious affection, and further to his aesthetic epistemology.

Discontinuities Between Locke And Edwards

Any investigation into Edwards’s epistemology needs to note that his appeal to sense is primarily related to a spiritual experience. While Locke’s emphasis of sense mostly focuses on natural human experiences in acquiring knowledge, Edwards’s use of sense aims to describe supernatural ones. According to Helm, “Edwards uses the language of ‘sense’ in an attempt to highlight what in his view was the peculiar character of religious experience, not to reduce it to the level of sense experience.” [43] In this regard, Miller seemingly fails to distinguish Edwards’s thought from Locke’s, because he believed that Edwards’s spiritual sense is no more than an extended type of natural sense. Miller writes, “In Edwards’s ‘sense of the heart,’ there is nothing transcendental; it is rather a sensuous apprehension of the total situation.” [44] If this were indeed so, one can see why Miller so closely associated Edwards’s sense with Locke’s.

However, in his Treatise concerning Religious Affections, Edwards clearly states that spiritual knowledge is “perfectly diverse from all that natural men have, till they have a new nature.” [45] Edwards explains, “It is evident, that those gracious influences of the spirits, and the effects of God’s Spirit which they experience, are entirely above nature, and altogether of a different kind from anything that men find in themselves by the exercise of natural principles.” [46]

Edwards firmly believed that the true works of the Holy Spirit are given only to the mind of the elect:

The inheritance that Christ has purchased for the elect, is the Spirit of God; not in any extraordinary gifts, but in his vital indwelling in the heart, exerting and communicating himself there, in his own proper, holy or divine nature: and this is the sum total of the inheritance that Christ purchased for the elect. [47]

Here, Edwards describes the Holy Spirit, revealing His own nature as one who indwells the heart of the elect. One could therefore say that only the elect could possess spiritual knowledge by the Holy Spirit.

Edwards’s assertion that the Holy Spirit provides the elect with spiritual knowledge seems to be simply faithful to the traditional Calvinistic view. However, the uniqueness of Edwards lies in his assertion that the existence of new spiritual sense is a precondition to receive the spiritual knowledge. According to Hoopes, Edwards was distinct from those earlier theologians “in the rigor of his insistence that utterly new knowledge requires a new sense.” [48] Edwards adopted Locke’s empirical model in order to explain the operation that the elect acquires the spiritual knowledge through the medium of new spiritual sense.

Edwards’s use of new spiritual sense is confined only to describe the mind of the elect when they acquire spiritual knowledge, while Locke applies his concept of new simple idea into the universal human mind when they acquire any kinds of knowledge. Consequently, in understanding Edwards’s epistemology, regeneration is the essential starting point through which the saints are equipped with new spiritual sense. Edwards explains that new spiritual sense is what the saints have received in regeneration. [49] As a result, the conversion becomes the essential process through which the saints identify themselves as the elect. Edwards thus says that God’s love to the elect is discovered by conversion. [50]

At this point, Edwards’s new spiritual sense shows a similarity with Locke’s new simple idea only in that the human mind is thoroughly passive in acquiring those concepts. However, Edwards originally utilized Lockean terminology to explain the procedure of regeneration. Helm argues that “what Locke had to say about simple ideas gave Edwards a model for what he thought happened at religious conversion.” [51] According to McClymond, “the spiritual sense is Edwards’s restatement, in the language of eighteenth-century philosophy, of the Puritan conviction that the unregenerate are spiritually blind and that conversion is the opening of one’s eyes to God.” [52]

Next, Edwards decisively shows a different perspective on the human mind in comparison to that of Locke. At this point, Edwards’s deviation from Locke becomes more obvious. While Locke describes the mind as entirely passive in acquiring new simple idea, Edwards replaces the same mind as having a potential ability to be activated under a certain condition. That is, the mind of the saint is temporarily passive until it is endowed with new spiritual sense. With this new spiritual sense, however, it rightly experiences the excellency and the amiableness of God. It is actively directed toward God and accompanied by perceiving divine values, which is the core of the religious affections.

Here as well the activity of the Holy Spirit works as the absolute threshold that awakens the human mind. To show this, Edwards explains that the Holy Spirit enlightens the minds of the saint, infuses saving grace, and abides with them as indwelling principle:

The Spirit of God is given to the true saints to dwell in them, as his proper lasting abode; and to influence their hearts, as a principle of new nature, or as a divine supernatural spring of life and action. The Scriptures represent the Holy Spirit, not only as moving, and occasionally influencing the saints, but as dwelling in them as his temple, his proper abode, and everlasting dwelling place (1 Corinthians 3:16, 2 Corinthians 6:16, John 14:16-17). And he is represented as being there so united to the faculties of the soul, that he becomes there a principle or spring of new nature and life. [53]

Here Edwards exemplifies that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes it possible for the human mind to actively contemplate the spiritual knowledge. Furthermore, with this new principle, the saints are able to grasp the true nature of all other creatures “as the images or shadows of divine things, that is, in their true relational structure.” [54]

Depicting the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the saints, Edwards appears to portray their connection so intimately united as to imply that the human faculties are identical with divine principle. [55] However, Edwards never destroys the chasm placed between God and human beings. The Holy Spirit is not collapsed into a human being, nor is the human mind absorbed mystically in the Holy Spirit. [56] Edwards denies both of amalgamation. Rather, stressing the sovereignty of God, Edwards accused the concept of mystical union with the Holy Spirit as heretical: “Not that the saints are made partakers of the essence of God, and so are ‘Godded’ with God, and ‘Christed’ with Christ, according to the abominable and blasphemous language and notions of some heretics.” [57]

For this reason, in Edwards’s epistemology, the human mind must depend on the revelation of the Holy Spirit to acquire spiritual knowledge. For Edwards, continuous “supernatural revelation and the spiritual light” is “essential for clarifying the nature of reality.” [58] However, Locke considered revelation just as “enlarged natural reason”: “Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately.”59 From these, one might conclude that Edwards’s diagram of epistemology shows “triadic” structure rather than “dyadic” connection. [60] Because, in this form of epistemological structure, not only are both “perceiving subject” and “perceived object” involved, but the Holy Spirit occupies the most important pivot. [61]

For these reasons, scholars such as Paul Ramsey and Conrad Cherry interpret Edwards’s use of Locke’s new simple idea in the context of the Augustinian doctrine of illumination and the traditional concept of infusion, rather than of Lockean origin. [62] Indeed, considering Edwards’s explanation on religious affections, illumination and infusion are two major works of the Holy Spirit that activate the human mind. As mentioned earlier, Edwards’s affection signifies an inclined state of the human mind in which understanding and willing are harmoniously integrated. To have true religious affections means 1) to have an illuminated understanding, and 2) to have an infused will by the work of the Holy Spirit. In his Religious Affections, Edwards exemplifies this procedure as follows:

The light of the Sun of Righteousness don’t [sic] only shine upon them, but is so communicated to them that they shine also, and become little images of that Sun which shines upon them; the sap of the true vine is not only conveyed into them, as the sap of a tree may be conveyed into a vessel, but is conveyed as sap is from a tree into one of its living branches, where it becomes a principle of life. The Spirit of God being thus communicated and united to the saints, they are from thence properly denominated from it, and are called spiritual. [63]

This quote demonstrates that divine light illuminates the minds of the saints and infuses new principle by communicating and uniting to their minds so that they also can reflect spiritual light. Thus, Ramsey insists in his introduction, “How wrong it is to reduce Jonathan Edwards’s system to that of John Locke, while ignoring the traditional doctrine of infusion and not giving equal weight to his Augustinian doctrine of illumination.” [64]

Terrence Erdt relates Edwards’s new spiritual sense to the Calvinistic psychology of sense of the heart. [65] According to Erdt, Edwards developed his concept of new spiritual sense out of the earlier Calvinist tradition, refashioning it with Locke’s emphasis on sense-experience and his own explanation of true conversions during the Great Awakening. [66] More directly, Erdt connects John Calvin’s concept of sensus suavitas with Edwards’s concept of tasting-sense: “Calvin’s explanation that the sense of the heart was the particular feeling that the saint had toward the message of salvation was not a piece of pietistic vaguery. He labeled the feeling itself suavitas, sweetness, which Edwards incorporated into his own lexicon to describe the religious experience.” [67] According to Erdt, this sense of suavitas is not only manifest in Calvin’s theology, but also has long been a part of the Calvinistic Puritan tradition.

From the arguments discussed so far, it seems clear that even though Edwards uses Lockean terminology, he deviates from Locke in that 1) his concern for sense is mainly to explain the spiritual experience, and 2) he adopted the character of new simple idea in an attempt to describe the concept of new spiritual sense. Consequently, Edwards’s epistemology is not consistent with Locke’s. Rather, Edwards’s teaching of new spiritual sense can be traced back to the Augustinian and Calvinistic doctrines. However, based on the concept of new spiritual sense, Edwards attempted to explain the aesthetic experience of the saints, focusing on God’s beauty where no earlier Calvinistic authors before him put such an emphasis. Douglas Elwood observes that “his stress on the primacy of the aesthetic over the moral and legal in our experience of God places the old Calvinism on a very different footing.” [68]

Edward’s Aesthetic Epistemology

In his Religious Affections, Edwards’s stress on sense is directly connected with relishing divine beauty. [69] That is, the saints taste no other than the beauty of the divine values through the God-given new spiritual sense. Edwards repeatedly reminds the intimate relationship between the new spiritual sense and the spiritual beauty in the Religious Affections:

The beauty of holiness is that thing in spiritual and divine things, which is perceived by this spiritual sense. [70] 

I have already shown what that new spiritual sense is, which the saints have given them in regeneration, and what is the object of it. I have shown that the immediate object of it is the supreme beauty and excellency of the nature of divine things, as they are in themselves. [71] 

Spiritual understanding consists primarily in a sense of heart of that spiritual beauty…and this sensibleness of the amiableness or delightfulness of beauty, carries in the very nature of it, the sense of the heart. [72] 

A sense of true divine beauty being given to the soul, the soul discerns the beauty of every part of the gospel scheme. [73]

Through the new spiritual sense, spiritual beauty is experienced. This aesthetic experience of divine beauty, then, becomes a true mark of distinguishing the regenerate from the unregenerate in Edwards’s understanding of genuine religious experience.

In other words, upon regeneration and conversion, the mind of the saints acquires new spiritual sense. Then, the mind of the saints is endowed with the new cognitive ability “to perceive something that it was not able to perceive before,” which is the new simple idea. [74] Now, the epistemological ability of the saints is elaborated to perceive the supreme beauty and excellency of God, which is impossible to natural men. We might conclude that saving grace and “the epistemological ability to discern beauty” are infused simultaneously to the mind of the saints by the Holy Spirit. Thus, Lee has rightly observed that “Edwards’s philosophical epistemology and theological soteriology merge into one doctrine,” the doctrine of spiritual sense. [75]

This shows how Edwards originally developed his aesthetic epistemology from using Lockean terminology. In Warranted Christian Belief, Alvin Plantinga shows Edwards’s use and development of new simple idea, linking it with cognitive ability:

In the fall into sin, Edwards thinks, we human beings lost a certain cognitive ability: the ability to apprehend God’s moral qualities. With conversion comes regeneration; part of the latter is the regeneration (to a greater or lesser extent) of this cognitive ability to grasp or apprehend the beauty, sweetness, amiability of the Lord himself and of the whole scheme of salvation. And it is just the cognitive ability that involves the new simple idea. And one who doesn’t have this new simple idea—one in whom the cognitive process in question has not been regenerated—doesn’t have spiritual knowledge of God’s beauty and loveliness. [76]

This displays how Locke’s new simple idea has been transformed into Edwards’s spiritual knowledge of God’s beauty.

What, then, is Edwards’s concept of beauty? Edwards states, “All beauty consists in similarness, or identity of relation.” [77] For Edwards, beauty is a matter of consent and agreement.78 Here, Edwards distinguishes two kinds of beauty: primary and secondary. Each corresponds to spiritual and natural. While secondary beauty “consists in mutual consent and agreement of different things in form, manner, quantity and visible end and design,” [79] primary beauty consists in mutual consent and agreement of beings who are able to choose and love. Thus, when Edwards explains God as the “foundation and fountain” of all beauty, [80] he describes perfect union and love of the triune God. From this inner-Trinitarian beauty, all kinds of beauty, indeed, all creation, is derived. [81] For Edwards, beauty is “the very structure of being.” [82] Beauty is not just only an epistemologically perceived concept through spiritual sense, but also constitutes an ontological reality of being. Thus, Roland Delattre observes that “beauty and sensibility may be said to be the objective and subjective components of the moral or spiritual life” in Edwards’s thought. [83] Edwards’s doctrine of new spiritual sense becomes the bridge that connects the objective and subjective aspect of beauty.

In the Religious Affections, this concept of beauty is mostly used to signify the moral perfection or holiness of the divine nature. Edwards distinctively contrasts those who have a spiritual taste to perceive the beauty of God’s moral perfection with those who just have a natural sense to perceive God’s natural perfection. [84] Edwards also states that “the beauty of the divine nature does primarily consist in God’s holiness.” [85] Thus, Edwards says, “the proper and immediate object of a spiritual mind” is the beauty of God’s moral perfection. [86]

This aesthetic experience of God’s moral perfection through the spiritual sense brings two contrasted but interrelated spiritual sensations to the minds of the saints: the beauty of God and the ugliness of sin. That is, every truly affected saint who experiences God’s beauty becomes deeply aware of his sinfulness at the same time. As Edwards noted, “[T]he same eye that discerns the transcendent of beauty of holiness, necessarily therein sees the exceeding odiousness of sin.” [87] The aesthetic experience of God’s holiness makes one realize that the doctrines of the gospel are true.

Due to the work of Holy Spirit as an indwelling principle, the saints do not just passively appreciate God’s beauty but actively become partakers of God’s beauty, and thus enter into true fellowship with God. [88] As a result, the saints manifest their proper beauty as the reflection of the moral image of God. “Herein consists the beauty of the saints that they are saints, or holy ones; it is the moral image of God in them, which is their beauty; and that is their holiness.” [89]

Taken together, it seems to follow that Edwards’s concept of beauty plays the most significant role in his epistemology throughout his Religious Affections. It is the “aesthetic perception” of God’s holiness through the new spiritual sense by which Edwards identifies genuine religious experience. For Edwards, God’s beauty is “the foundation of all genuine affections.” [90]

Conclusion

Perry Miller’s influential study of Edwards undoubtedly offered a certain insight when he asserted that Edwards’s theology is closely connected with Locke’s empiricism. Miller was partly right in that Edwards used Lockean terminology and his empirical model in describing religious experience. However, Miller carries his assertion too far when he asserts that Edwards, in the Religious Affections, rendered the supernatural religious experience of Calvinism into the comprehensible natural phenomenon by using Locke’s concept of new simple idea. [91]

This paper has demonstrated that Lockean language was uniquely transformed for Edwards’s own purpose and use in the Religious Affections. At every point, Edwards’s use of new simple idea supposes that the new simple idea is spiritual, supernatural, and divine knowledge. In addition, Edwards’s appeal to sense does not transfer the supernatural into the natural, but shows that new simple idea necessarily requires new spiritual sense. Here, Edwards’s use of Lockean terminology serves as distinguishing between a notional understanding and a sensible perception of spiritual knowledge. Furthermore, based on the concept of new spiritual sense, Edwards explains his own aesthetic epistemology while being faithful to his Calvinistic tradition. For Edwards, the object of the new spiritual sense is no other than God’s beauty.

Therefore, it is too much to say that Edwards’s theology is categorized in a wholly Lockean framework. Edwards’s use of Lockean terminology, by contributing to develop his concept of new spiritual sense, strengthens his Calvinistic perspectives in the Religious Affections and thus reveals his original concept of aesthetic epistemology.

Notes

1. Perry Miller, “Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart,” Harvard Theological Review 41 (1948): 123-45; Jonathan Edwards (New York: William Sloane, 1949), passim; and Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), passim. In these works, Miller strongly asserted that Locke was the most dominating source from which Edwards acquired almost all his theoretical starting points.
2. Reactions to Miller’s thesis are numerous; some of note are John E. Smith, editor’s introduction to “Religious Affections,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 73 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), 2:1-83, “Jonathan Edwards: Piety and Practice in the American Character,” The Journal of Religion, vol. 54, no. 2 (1974): 166-80, “Jonathan Edwards as Philosophical Theologian,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 30, no. 2 (1976): 306-24; and Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992); Wallace E. Anderson, “Immaterialism in Jonathan Edwards’ Early Philosophical Notes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 25, no. 2 (1964): 181-200; Paul Helm, “John Locke and Jonathan Edwards: A Reconsideration,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1969): 51-61; “A Forensic Dilemma: John Locke and Jonathan Edwards on Personal Identity,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, ed. Paul Helm and Oliver D. Crisp (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003), 45-60; and “The Human Self and the Divine Trinity,” in Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary, Essays in Honor of Sang Hyun Lee, ed. Don Schweitzer (New York, Peter Lang, 2010): 93-106; George Rupp, “The ‘Idealism’ of Jonathan Edwards,” Harvard Theological Review 62, no. 2 (1969): 209-26; Edward H. Davidson, “From Locke to Edwards,” Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 355-72; Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (1966; reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), passim; Morton White, Science and Sentiment in America: Philosophical Thought from Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 35; Jean-Pierre Martin, “Edwards’s Epistemology and the New Science,” Early American Literature, vol. 7, no. 3, (1973): 247-55; Terence Erdt, “The Calvinist Psychology of the Heart and the ‘Sense’ of Jonathan Edwards,” Early American Literature 13 (1978): 165-80; and Jonathan Edwards, Art, and the Sense of the Heart (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980); David Laurence, “Jonathan Edwards, John Locke, and the Canon of Experience,” Early American Literature 15 (1980): 107-23; David Lyttle, “The Supernatural Light,” in Studies in Religion in Early American Literature (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), 1-20; James Hoopes, “Jonathan Edwards’s Religious Psychology,” Journal of American History 69 (1983): 849-65; and Consciousness in New England (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), passim; Norman Fiering, “The Rationalist Foundations of Jonathan Edwards’s Metaphysics,” in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 73-93; and Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 33-45; Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), passim; Robert E. Brown, “Edwards, Locke, and the Bible,” The Journal of Religion, 79, no. 3 (1999): 361-84; Michael J. McClymond, “Spiritual Perception in Jonathan Edwards,” The Journal of Religion, 77, no. 2 (1997): 195-216, Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), passim; Alan P. F. Sell, John Locke and the Eighteenth-Century Divines (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 16-62; Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 60-76, 311-20.
3. Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, 3, citing James H. Nicholas, Review of Perry Miller’s Jonathan Edwards, in Church History, 20 (1951): 79. On the same page, Cherry adds his explanation to show Edwards’s propensity for Calvinist thought: “Yet Edwards was willing to be called a Calvinist, for distinction’s sake…the sovereignty and freedom of God; the drama of history as the story both of man’s tragic fallenness and of God’s renewed purpose to deliver; man’s frailty and unworthiness in comparison with the justice and mercy of a majestic God; the personal and social value of a disciplined, holy life of practice.”
4. George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 63.
5. Fiering, “The Rationalist Foundations of Jonathan Edwards’s Metaphysics,” 77. To specify, Fiering identifies them as the “theocentric metaphysicians,” a sub-branch of the so-called Continental school. According to Fiering, Edwards fits perfectly into that group of scholars, whereas Locke hardly belongs at all.
6. Smith, “Jonathan Edwards as Philosophical Theologian,” 311.
7. Smith, “Jonathan Edwards: Piety and Practice in the American Character,” 169-70.
8. Smith, “Jonathan Edwards: Piety and Practice in the American Character,” 170.
9. For further explanation on this subject, see Helm, “The Human Self and the Divine Trinity,” 93-106.
10. See, John Locke, The Works of John Locke, 10 vols. (London: Thomas Tegg, 1823), 2.21.6; and Edwards, Works, 2:96.
11. Louise May Bryant and Mary Patterson, “The List of Books Sent by Jeremiah Dummer,” in Papers in Honor of Andrew Keogh, Librarian of Yale University, by the Staff of the Library, 30 June 1938 (New Haven, Conn.: privately printed, 1938), 435.
12. Edwards, Works, 26:326.
13. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1.1.2.
14. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1.4.25.
15. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.1.2.
16. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.1.3.
17. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.1.4.
18. Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 118.
19. Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 124.
20. Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 124.
21. Edwards, Works, 6:391.
22. Edwards, Works, 2:391.
23. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 313.
24. Edwards, Works, 2:95.
25. Edwards, Works, 2:96.
26. McClymond and McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 312-13.
27. Edwards, Works, 2:266.
28. Edwards, Works, 2:96.
29. Smith, “Jonathan Edwards: Piety and Practice in the American Character,” 169-70.
30. Harold Simonson, “Introduction” to Selected Writings of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Waveland Press, 1970), 12.
31. Smith, “Jonathan Edwards: Piety and Practice in the American Character,” 170.
32. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.2.1.
33. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.2.1.
34. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 2.1.25.
35. Sell, John Locke and the Eighteenth-Century Divines, 29. A Latin phrase, which means “god from the machine.” The term was first used in ancient Greek and Roman drama, where it meant the timely appearance of a god to unravel and resolve the plot. The deus ex machina was named for the convention of the god’s appearing in the sky, an effect achieved by means of a crane. Since ancient times, the phrase has also been applied to an unexpected saviour or to an improbable event that brings order out of chaos. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “deus ex machina,” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/159659/deus-ex-machina (December 8, 2013).
36. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 4.4.4.
37. Smith, “Jonathan Edwards: Piety and Practice in the American Character,” 170.
38. Edwards, Works, 2:205.
39. Edwards, Works, 2:205.
40. Laurence, “Jonathan Edwards, John Locke, and the Canon of Experience,” 108.
41. Helm, “John Locke and Jonathan Edwards: A Reconsideration,” 54.
42. Smith, Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher, 26.
43. Helm, “John Locke and Jonathan Edwards: A Reconsideration,” 54.
44. Miller, “Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart,” 127.
45. Edwards, Works, 2:272.
46. Edwards, Works, 2:266.
47. Edwards, Works, 2:236.
48. Hoopes, Consciousness in New England, 83.
49. Edwards, Works, 2:271.
50. Edwards, Works, 2:249.
51. Helm, “A Forensic Dilemma: John Lock and Jonathan Edwards on Personal Identity,” 45.
52. McClymond, Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 9.
53. Edwards, Works, 2:201.
54. Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 144.
55. See Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, 28-29.
56. Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, 29.
57. Edwards, Works, 2:203.
58. Douglas A. Sweeney, “‘Longing for More and More of It?’: The Strange Career of Jonathan Edwards’s Exegetical Exertions,” Jonathan Edwards at 300, ed. Harry S. Stout, Kenneth P. Minkema, and Caleb J. D. Maskell (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2005), 28.
59. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 4.19.4.
60. McClymond, “Spiritual Perception in Jonathan Edwards,” 201. See also Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, 25-43.
61. McClymond, “Spiritual Perception in Jonathan Edwards,” 201.
62. See Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, 25-43; Paul Ramsey, editor’s introduction to Freedom of the Will, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 73 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), 1:40-44.
63. Edwards, Works, 2:201-2.
64. Ramsey, editor’s introduction to Freedom of the Will, 43.
65. See Erdt, “The Calvinist Psychology of the Heart and the ‘Sense’ of Jonathan Edwards,” 165-80, and Jonathan Edwards, Art, and the Sense of the Heart, 2-23.
66. See Erdt, Jonathan Edwards, Art, and the Sense of the Heart, 2-23.
67. Erdt, “The Calvinist Psychology of the Heart and the ‘Sense’ of Jonathan Edwards,” 171.
68. Douglas Elwood, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 3.
69. Here, for the detailed purpose of this paper, I will deal with Edwards’s explanation of beauty while mainly focusing on its relation with new spiritual sense. Thus, the epistemological aspect of beauty will be mostly treated. For thorough investigations on Edwards’s concept of beauty, see Roland Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards; An Essay in Aesthetics and Theological Ethics (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1968); Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards; and Louis Mitchell, Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty, Studies in Reformed Theology and History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2003).
70. Edwards, Works, 2:260.
71. Edwards, Works, 2:271.
72. Edwards, Works, 2:272.
73. Edwards, Works, 2:302.
74. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 298.
75. Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 143.
76. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 299.
77. Edwards, Works, 6:334.
78. Edwards, Works, 8:562.
79. Edwards, Works, 8:561.
80. Edwards, Works, 8:551.
81. Mitchell, Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty, 105.
82. Mitchell, Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty, 105.
83. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards, 3.
84. Edwards, Works, 2:263.
85. Edwards, Works, 2:258.
86. Edwards, Works, 2:271.
87. Edwards, Works, 2:301.
88. Edwards, Works, 2:201.
89. Edwards, Works, 2:258.
90. Mitchell, Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty, 106.
91. See Miller, Jonathan Edwards, 186-87.