RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
This isn’t really an exegetical defense of Original Sin as it is an extended book review on Dr Taylor’s works. There is some exegesis, and Edwards does make a few good comments on concreated holiness, but the real fireworks are at the end.
Identity with Adam: mankind has a “constituted connexion” with Adam as an acorn does with an oak (IV.II. n). Edwards acknowledges, but does not develop, a federal principle in Adam. In this same section Edwards affirms creationism as opposed to traducianism.
Edwards’ conclusion is that Adam’s posterity is one with him (IV.III). It is a “constituted oneness or identity.” This allows him to solve the problem of imputation. “By the law of union there is a communion and co-existence of acts” between Adam and his posterity (see note). That’s his imputation: “his posterity are viewed in the same place with their father.”
Edwards pays a high price for his doctrine of imputation. Strictly speaking, nothing is imputed. If I do something, you don’t impute my doing the act to me. I simply did it. Likewise, since Edwards has identified Adam and his posterity, his posterity just as equally did the act. There is nothing to impute.
Edwards tries to get around these problems of identity by using analogies of body/soul, tree/acorn. He takes Locke’s theory of identity as “sameness of consciousness” and adds a new twist. Personal identity depends on a law of nature, namely the “sovereign will and agency of God” (p. 223 in the Banner of Truth edition). Here is his argument:
(1) Personal identity depends on God’s constitution.
(2) God continually upholds and preserves his creation.
(3) Our dependent existence is an “effect and must have some cause” and the cause is either an antecedent cause or the power of the creator.
(4) It cannot be an antecedent cause because no passive thing can create a cause in space and time that is greater than itself, and so must pass out of existence. If it is out of existence it cannot create a new cause.
(5) “Therefore, the existence of created substances, in each successive moment, must be the effect of the immediate agency, will, and power of God”.
(5*) New exertions of divine power are needed to keep things from dropping into nothing.
But isn’t Edwards simply saying that God upholds things every moment, and if God didn’t exist, they wouldn’t? No. He goes on to say:
(6) God is “causing its existence in each successive moment.” In fact, he says this is “altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment” (224).
Criticisms
There are some major problems with this. If God’s reconstituting humanity at each new moment does all the heavy lifting, then why is there any need for a metaphysical oneness with Adam? Couldn’t God just view it like that? Oliver Crisp points out that “Divine fiat is doing all the explanatory work” (Jonathan Edwards Among the Theologians 121). Further, it appears that not only is God recreating the world at every moment, he is creating sin at every moment. This is a fatal price to pay.
Unfortunately, I think JE paid too high a price. He must surrender either his view of Original Sin or his view of the Will. In the latter he said that each moment’s prior state was the cause of the next state. But here he seems to say that the antecedent cause has no real existence. If it doesn’t, then it can’t cause the next state, pace Freedom of the Will.
Oliver Crisp has raised yet a bigger problem: if God is recreating me each moment, and I am a sinful human, then is God creating evil and sin each moment?
Identity with Adam: mankind has a “constituted connexion” with Adam as an acorn does with an oak (IV.II. n). Edwards acknowledges, but does not develop, a federal principle in Adam. In this same section Edwards affirms creationism as opposed to traducianism.
Edwards’ conclusion is that Adam’s posterity is one with him (IV.III). It is a “constituted oneness or identity.” This allows him to solve the problem of imputation. “By the law of union there is a communion and co-existence of acts” between Adam and his posterity (see note). That’s his imputation: “his posterity are viewed in the same place with their father.”
Edwards pays a high price for his doctrine of imputation. Strictly speaking, nothing is imputed. If I do something, you don’t impute my doing the act to me. I simply did it. Likewise, since Edwards has identified Adam and his posterity, his posterity just as equally did the act. There is nothing to impute.
Edwards tries to get around these problems of identity by using analogies of body/soul, tree/acorn. He takes Locke’s theory of identity as “sameness of consciousness” and adds a new twist. Personal identity depends on a law of nature, namely the “sovereign will and agency of God” (p. 223 in the Banner of Truth edition). Here is his argument:
(1) Personal identity depends on God’s constitution.
(2) God continually upholds and preserves his creation.
(3) Our dependent existence is an “effect and must have some cause” and the cause is either an antecedent cause or the power of the creator.
(4) It cannot be an antecedent cause because no passive thing can create a cause in space and time that is greater than itself, and so must pass out of existence. If it is out of existence it cannot create a new cause.
(5) “Therefore, the existence of created substances, in each successive moment, must be the effect of the immediate agency, will, and power of God”.
(5*) New exertions of divine power are needed to keep things from dropping into nothing.
But isn’t Edwards simply saying that God upholds things every moment, and if God didn’t exist, they wouldn’t? No. He goes on to say:
(6) God is “causing its existence in each successive moment.” In fact, he says this is “altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment” (224).
Criticisms
There are some major problems with this. If God’s reconstituting humanity at each new moment does all the heavy lifting, then why is there any need for a metaphysical oneness with Adam? Couldn’t God just view it like that? Oliver Crisp points out that “Divine fiat is doing all the explanatory work” (Jonathan Edwards Among the Theologians 121). Further, it appears that not only is God recreating the world at every moment, he is creating sin at every moment. This is a fatal price to pay.
Unfortunately, I think JE paid too high a price. He must surrender either his view of Original Sin or his view of the Will. In the latter he said that each moment’s prior state was the cause of the next state. But here he seems to say that the antecedent cause has no real existence. If it doesn’t, then it can’t cause the next state, pace Freedom of the Will.
Oliver Crisp has raised yet a bigger problem: if God is recreating me each moment, and I am a sinful human, then is God creating evil and sin each moment?