The Historical Context of Jonathan Edwards’ Discussion of the Intellect and Will

The Great Awakening & Factions

In order to properly understand Edwards at this point, it is essential that we understand his own historical context for it is here that we will clearly see the contours of his views as they are compared and contrasted with those of his theological opponents.

The social context into which Edwards spoke was, of course, the age of the Great Awakening. But what is it about the Great Awakening that could be of interest here? It is the fact that the nature of the human soul and its various powers was at the heart of many of the debates of that era.

The basic question was whether the Great Awakening in its day was a legitimate work of God or the work of excited passions or (worse still), the work of the Devil. Jonathan Edwards, in endeavoring to defend the awakenings that occurred in his parish in Northampton and across the colonies, endeavored to plow a middle row between the two extremes (the “two great armies”) of rationalism on the one hand and unbridled enthusiasm on the other.

What this meant was that he challenged the regnant faculty psychology of his day in order to pioneer a path toward a better understanding of the human personality or soul or mind. In other words, Edwards was not conducting an abstract examination of the human soul. He was endeavoring to deal with the two extremes in the awakening that he deemed problematic.

Edwards was deeply embroiled in the religious controversies of his day, many of which related in one way or another to the Great Awakening. His position on saving faith separated him from both the rationalists and the enthusiasts-what Cherry calls the parties of neonomianism and antinomianism. In the 1740s Edwards struggled to define a theological position that embraced both the mind and the affections. He rejected the efforts of those who wanted to dismiss the widespread religious stirrings as the product of deluded imaginations and manipulative ministers, declaring instead that the revivals represented the genuine work of God’s spirit. At the same time he chided those driven by the awakening to extreme ecstatic behavior and censoriousness, calling rather for continued commitment to the principles of order and intellect.¹

Jonathan Edwards was endeavoring to develop an approach to the interaction of the various powers of the soul which emphasized their harmonious or unified operations. He neither confused or conflated the intellect and the will, nor hermetically compartmentalized them.²

As we have already seen with regard to true religious affections, the intellect and will worked together. The human soul comprised a “dispositional complex.” Edwards was dealing with rationalists like Charles Chauncey on the one hand and enthusiasts like James Davenport on the other. In other words, true religion comprised neither light without heat nor heat without light.³

I have already mentioned that Edwards was trying to break new ground, as it were, by fashioning a new way to understand the human soul wherein he could avoid the faculty psychology which he had inherited.

What was so bad about the faculty psychology after all?

The kind of faculty psychology that Chauncey defended (in his support of rationalism and his criticism of the Great Awakening) posited a hierarchical chain or gradation of the faculties in which the most valued (reason) was at the top of the hierarchy and those less valued (such as the emotions) were at the bottom.

The reason controlled the will and the passions and any effort to appeal to the will by bypassing the reason was deemed wrong.

For Chauncey, the pastors of the awakening were preaching so as to appeal merely to the emotions while skirting the intellect.⁴ According to him, true religion consisted in the supremacy of reason.

On the other hand, enthusiasts such as James Davenport saw true religion as residing in the passions apart from the use of reason.⁵

Edwards had to respond to both groups by fashioning a new understanding of the human soul all the while using language that seemed more at home in the context of traditional faculty psychology.

Is faculty psychology problematic because it makes distinctions between the intellect and the will? Or is it problematic because it prizes one faculty or power over another? Didn’t Edwards himself make distinctions among the various powers of the human soul? Yes, he did. This is partly because distinctions are not problematic in themselves and because distinguishing language is hard to avoid if we are going to talk meaningfully about the soul or anything whatsoever. That is, to make distinctions is not to make one part of a distinction more important than another.

To recognize difference in function is not to value one function over another. We make a distinction between our right leg and our left, but to ask which is more important seems either mistaken or silly. And to examine something closely involves the act of making distinctions.

This thing is different from that thing. To say that A is different from B is not the same thing as saying A is more important than B.

So it seems to me that making distinctions is legitimate and that there are legitimate distinctions to be made regarding the powers of the soul. Thinking and willing are different kinds of powers, although by no means are they to be separated. Nor is it possible to avoid this kind of language if we are going to talk specifically about the soul doing this or the soul doing that.

So Edwards had to speak, so it seems, in terms of the relations of the intellect and will, even if he didn’t conceive of them in terms of a hierarchical faculty psychology. The issue for Edwards was not distinction, but the problem of separation and valuation. The powers of the soul worked together and it was one soul, one dispositional complex, that did these different things.

Endnotes

1. Fiering, Edwards’ Moral Thought, p. 269.

2. Stephen J. Stein, introduction to Cherry’s Theology of Jonathan Edwards, p. xii.

3. John Smith tells us, “The first point to be stressed is that Edwards, for all his ability to draw clear distinctions, nevertheless struggled to preserve the unity and integrity of the self and to avoid compartmentalizing the human functions and powers. This means that despite his rather sharp distinction between the understanding, affections, and will, we must not overlook the extent to which these initial distinctions are overridden in the course of the argument. The entire discussion shows a moving back and forth between analysis and synthesis; clarity demands distinctions within the self and between its powers, but the integrity of the self requires that its faculties or capacities
be related to each other so as to preserve unity.” Introduction to Affections, pp. 11-12.

4. Edwards, Affections, p. 120.

5. This assessment is the point that is challenged by Edwards with his definition of the affections involving both understanding and will. See Chauncey’s sermon “Enthusiasm Discovered and Caution’d” in Heimert and Miller, Great Awakening, pp. 228 - 256.

6. See Davenport’s “Confession and Retractions,” in Heimert and Miller, Great Awakening, pp. 257 - 262, especially p. 260 where he addresses impressions or impulses.