Was Edwards an Intellectualist, a Voluntarist or a Concurrentist?

Edwards was not pioneering the avoidance of the use of distinctions, but he was trying to look at the powers of the soul as working together. What I think he was trying to move away from was the valuation of one faculty over another. In the proper operation of the powers of the soul, it was possible for the intellect or understanding to be enlightened with little or no impact on the will (perhaps some forms of speculative science or Plantingian analytic philosophy might fall into this category) and conversely it may have been possible to move the will with little or no impact on the understanding.⁴⁴ Edwards recognizes these possibilities, but in the exercise of true religious affections, both the intellect and the will were involved. In conversion, it is not a matter of the intellect working without the will nor is it a matter of the will without the intellect or understanding. They work together. Each is necessary and both are essential. After all, how could the will be attracted to or repulsed by something without that object being held in view?⁴⁵ I suppose it is possible to so construe the operation of the will that it performs perceptive or cognitive or speculative functions. But then the question would shift from the relationship of the intellect and will, to the relationship of the cognitive to the volitional or affective aspects or functions of the will. My point is that we would still have to reckon with questions of taxis in the dispositional complex, whether it is the relation of one power or faculty to another or the relations of functions within one faculty.

The issue, then, is not about making distinctions. To repeat myself, for Edwards the problem is not the making of distinctions but the separation of powers to such an extent that they become compartmentalized and the hierarchical valuation of the intellect over the will as can be found in Chauncey, nor the converse, the apparent elevation of the will over the intellect as the enthusiasts seem to assume. True affections involve an idea to which the will responds with heightened awareness. Edwards is not attempting to abolish the proper distinctions made between the intellect and will, that is, he is not trying to conflate or confuse them. He is simply attempting to show their unity. And unity implies both harmonious difference and harmonious differentiation.

Edwards’ distinction between speculative or notional understanding and spiritual understanding (another name for the “sense of the heart”) may help us to get at his concern to stress the unity (but not the identity) of the powers of the human soul. One could understand Edwards in an intellectualist sense since true religious affections, or spiritual understanding, or the sense of the heart involve an object being perceived by the understanding and then the will being attracted to or repulsed from it (i.e., manifesting affections). While there may be priority in some sense, it is not a priority of value nor is it a primacy in the sense that that word is usually used (i.e., primacy implies more significance or importance than something that doesn’t have it). To use Plantinga’s language, there are “dependency relations” between the intellect and the will, and if I understand Edwards aright, it is possible to have speculative knowledge of the great things of the gospel without having a spiritual knowledge of them. But it is not possible to have spiritual knowledge, the sense of the heart or true affections without speculative understanding.

To the rationalists, Edwards would say that you can’t have true religion without the will in act (i.e., affections) and to the enthusiasts he would say that you can’t have true religion without the use of the understanding or intellect. So I suppose Edwards could be understood as an intellectualist, but that seems to imply a valuation he wouldn’t accept and it fails to take cognizance of his concern to stress the unity of the powers of the human soul. Edwards may sound like an intellectualist and that may conflict with his perceived emphasis on the affections, but that misunderstanding only seems possible to me if one presupposes some sort of faculty psychology and its hierarchical valuation that Edwards was himself trying to transcend, and a misunderstanding of the nature of affections.⁴⁶

Jonathan Edwards could also be understood as a voluntarist as he has been indeed understood by many scholars who recognize Edwards’ desire to transcend faculty psychology. Both Allen Guelzo and Norman Fiering see him in the voluntarist tradition, albeit qualified in an Augustinian way. The will is not blind nor is it obligated to follow the dictates of the understanding. With his own Augustinian and Reformed tradition he understood that it was the orientation of the individual that determined what was primary, grace or sin.

But, as we have already seen, Edwards could be understood to conform to the concurrentist model that Plantinga seems to embrace. Edwards sometimes finds it hard to distinguish the acts of the intellect and the will in his “sense of the heart.” This would seem to suggest the same view Plantinga comes to at the end of his own discussion of the subject.

So which model best describes Jonathan Edwards on this issue? I myself have changed my view on this subject. I have not changed my mind on whether Edwards moved away from the hierarchical faculty psychology of his day, and that he wanted to emphasize the unified powers of the dispositional complex that comprises the human soul. Where I have changed in my assessment of the situation is in my satisfaction with classifying Edwards as a voluntarist, Augustinian or otherwise. We can see, I think, how Edwards could be understood as a functional
intellectualist or as an Augustinian voluntarist or maybe even as a Plantingian concurrentist. Why I find each view attractive in turn is that each touches on an element of truth in Edwards’ own position. While Edwards makes room for the use of the intellect that moves the will a little or not at all, and while he recognizes that the will can be moved without the light of the understanding, true religion consists in both functioning together. If l must use the intellectualist label, he would certainly not be understood as an absolute intellectualist since that is best exemplified in the person of Charles Chauncey, whom Edwards clearly opposed. Given Edwards Trinitarian views and the analogical nature of the human soul or personality to the Trinity, he could be classified as a functional or economic intellectualist, as long as we keep in mind what this entails. However, Edwards can also be seen as a voluntarist, but most definitely not of the Scholastic-Voluntarist variety. The will is not free from the influences of the whole personality of an individual. While Edwards along with Augustinian voluntarism, recognized that the will did not necessarily follow the last dictate of the intellect, it does in the exercise of true religion since true affections arise at the sight of the loveliness of God and of the great things of the gospel. With the Augustinian Voluntarist school Edwards most assuredly affirmed that there was a primacy of orientation in an individual. There is neither primacy of the intellect nor of the will in the practice of true religion, where true religious affections are in evidence. And it is possible that Edwards can be described as a concurrentist in that he sometimes found it hard to distinguish between the intellect and will in the sense of the heart. But Edwards didn’t always find that distinction hard to make.

Edwards, as I see him, doesn’t fit comfortably into either the intellectualist or the voluntarist school as we have understood them up to this point. To label him as either a functional intellectualist or an Augustinian voluntarist seems to assume the very priority or primacy that I think he would reject. Jonathan Edwards, rather, affirms elements of both. He affirms the functional priority of the intellect in the rising of true religious affections and he affirms that the will is not enslaved to the intellect, both the intellect and will reflect their orientation in sin or grace. They either work properly under the rule and reign of grace or improperly under the rule and reign of sin. To affirm the functional priority of the intellect in perceiving an object or in holding an idea to which the will then responds (or as the concurrentist model would affirm, both operate simultaneously) is not to imply that one is more important than the other. In a highly significant way, to try to affirm the greater significance of the intellect viz-a-viz the will or vice versa is closely akin to trying to affirm the greater significance of either unity over diversity (oneness or threeness) or vice versa in the Holy Trinity. Neither properly comes first or last in importance, even though we do recognize the distinction. As I have mentioned throughout this essay, Edwards affirms the “dispositional complex.” The dispositional complex involves both distinction and unity, difference in function and equality of importance. It is not wrong to make distinctions. As I have already discussed, if we can’t make distinctions, learning grinds to a halt before an amorphous undifferentiated mass or a blooming, buzzing chaos. Edwards talked meaningfully about the human soul, in my opinion, affirming both the distinction of powers (i.e., in Trinitarian language, diversity) and unity of powers.

44. This seems to be the position of the enthusiasts in their understanding of true religion. Whereas the latter was the understanding of religion from the perspective of the rationalists.

45. I understand this may beg the question as to what “in view” means.

46. Plantinga seems to think Edwards’ emphasis on the heart is in contradistinction to the intellect, but if I understand Edwards aright at this point, the heart includes both the intellect and the will since true religious affections involve both and true religious affections appear to me to be synonymous with spiritual understanding and the sense of the heart. The heart is not the source of emotions only. In other words, it just is the dispositional
complex.