scholarly journals Science, metaphysics and Calvinism: the God of James Croll

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Diarmid A. FINNEGAN
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Basic Science ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Hard Case ◽  
Final Cause ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The Will

ABSTRACT Science, for James Croll, began and ended in metaphysics. Metaphysics, in turn, provided proof of a First and Final Cause of all things. This proof rested on two metaphysical principles: that every event must have a cause, and that the determination of a cause is distinct from its production. This argument emerged from his deeply held religious commitments. As a 17-year-old, he converted to a Calvinist and evangelical form of Christianity. After a period of questioning the Calvinist system, he embraced it again through reading the famous treatise on the will by the New England theologian, Jonathan Edwards. This determinedly metaphysical work, which engaged as much with Enlightenment thought as with Calvinism, defended the view that the will was not a self-determining cause of human action. This ‘hard case’ provided the basis for a larger claim that every act whatever has a cause, and that the production of an act was different from its determination. In part through reading Edwards, Croll remained a devout and convinced ‘moderate’ Calvinist for the rest of his life. He also developed a deep love of metaphysics and became convinced that without it, everything, including science, remained confused and in darkness. For Croll, even the most basic science could not be properly conducted without prior metaphysical principles. But this was more than just an argument about the philosophical foundations of scientific inquiry. It was also based on Croll's conviction that the cosmos, earth history and life (including his own) was fully determined by a supreme and perfect intellect. This conviction entered into the marrow of Croll's scientific theories and shaped his interpretation of the twists and turns of his own life. In short, to take seriously Croll's own self-understanding, we need to allow him to ‘do God’.

Neither Libertarian nor Compatibilist

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 267-286
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Recent Attempt ◽  
Faculty Psychology ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Will ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The present essay addresses Paul Helm’s most recent attempt to assimilate the thought of such Reformed scholastics as Francis Turretin to the ‘compatibilism’ of Jonathan Edwards. Helm has misunderstood a series of important scholastic distinctions concerning the relationship of intellect and will in the older faculty psychology, and the relationship of foundational or, as I identified it, ‘root’ indifference in the will to its multiple potencies. He has, accordingly, failed to register how Reformed orthodox understandings of free choice outlined in recent scholarship affirm both a simultaneity or synchronicity of potencies or capacities of the will and a diachronicity of actual effects and events. The Reformed orthodox writers certainly thought that human freedom was not incompatible with the divine determination of all things—their resolution of the issue does not, however, coincide with modern compatibilism.

Britain and Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 478-494
Author(s):  
Jonathan Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
The Past ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Modern Era

In Britain and Europe, Jonathan Edwards was first known as a revivalist. Early works such as A Faithful Narrative (1737), The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New-England (1742), and Religious Affections (1746) brought him international acclaim in the 1740s. Later works such as Freedom of the Will (1754) and Original Sin (1758) extended his reputation in Britain and Europe as a theologian and philosopher. His status as a revivalist and important American thinker depended on the booksellers, printers, and editors who worked behind the scenes to publish his works within his lifetime, and in the decades following his death in 1758. At the end of the eighteenth century, and into the modern era, intellectuals in Britain and Continental Europe began critically analysing Edwards’s thought; some of them celebrated him as an innovative Reformed theologian, with others pronouncing him as an archaic specimen of the past.

Pembagian Harta Waris dalam Tradisi Masyarakat Muslim di Gorontalo

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
Hamid Pongoliu
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Sharia Law ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Law

Gorontalo has a customary principle derived from sharia law, and the sharia law is sourced from the Qur'an, hadith, ijmak and qiyas (adati-hula'a to syara'a, syara'a hula'a to Kitabi), which should reflect the existence of the implementation of the distribution of inheritance in Islam in the Gorontalo community. This customary principle can be a source of law if it is a rational act, not immorality, done always repeatedly, does not bring harm and does not conflict with the law of sharak. But in reality there is the implementation of inheritance that violates Islamic law, namely the distribution by way of deliberation, the determination of the amount of heirs equally, the delay in the distribution of inheritance, wills with houses given to girls, wills not to distribute inheritance, distribution of assets it depends on the will of the heir and the delay in the distribution of inheritance on the grounds that one of the parents is still alive. The distribution by deliberation and determination of the amount of the portion for each heir are equally acceptable as long as they follow the guidelines of the Compilation of Islamic Law article 183 and the concept of takharruj which was previously preceded by the Shari'a division. After the heirs know the size of the portion, then they may agree to share it in their own way or leave the inheritance according to Shari'a and agree to give to each other with other heirs.

The Contested Will of “Goodman Penn”: Anglo–New England Politics, Culture, and Legalities, 1688–1716

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-584
Author(s):  
John M. Lund
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Suffolk County ◽  
The Other ◽  
William Penn ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Made In

In February 1704, a Boston laborer named Thomas Lea found himself surrounded by townspeople as he lay on his deathbed. These spectators had gathered hoping to hear a much anticipated confession of the crimes they believed Lea had committed fifteen years earlier during the Dominion of New England. In Suffolk County, many townspeople had long maintained that Lea and others had used the confusion and chaos generated by the unsettling political and legal transformations introduced to New England during the 1680s to surreptitiously gain legal title to the estate of a prosperous Braintree, Massachusetts, landowner named William Penn. Standing by Lea's bedside, one witness, who believed Lea had perjured himself at the 1689 probate administration of Penn's estate, demanded: “Thomas can you as you are going out of the World answer at the Tribunal of God to the Will of Mr Penns, which you have sworn to[?]” “Was Mr Penn living or Dead when this Will was Made?” In the presence of assembled witnesses, Lea acknowledged, “he was dead.” Other townspeople pressed Lea to reveal the role he played in what many believed had been a murder for inheritance scheme. They reminded Lea that Penn's corpse had been found covered “in blood, in his own dung” with “a hole in his back, that you might turn your two fingers into it” and, even more disturbing, “one of his [Penn's] stones in his codd [scrotum] was broken all to pieces.” Averting the onlookers' gaze, Lea “turned his head aside the other way, saying what I did I was hired to do.” For these witnesses, the death-bed confession confirmed the rumors of Lea's crimes and strengthened their belief that a wave of corruption introduced in the 1680s had sabotaged New England's distinctive Puritan jurisprudence. Indeed, townspeople had labored for years to overturn the 1689 probate of Penn's estate in an effort forestall the crown's efforts to bring New England into political and legal conformity with the dictates of the growing English empire.

Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart

1948 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Miller
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
American Mind ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Work ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind

The reputation of Jonathan Edwards, impressive though it is, rests upon only a fragmentary representation of the range or profundity of his thinking. Harassed by events and controversies, he was forced repeatedly to put aside his real work and to expend his energies in turning out sermons, defenses of the Great Awakening, or theological polemics. Only two of his published books (and those the shortest), The Nature of True Virtue and The End for which God Created the World, were not ad hoc productions. Even The Freedom of the Will is primarily a dispute, aimed at silencing the enemy rather than expounding a philosophy. He died with his Summa still a mass of notes in a bundle of home-made folios, the handwriting barely legible. The conventional estimate that Edwards was America's greatest metaphysical genius is a tribute to his youthful Notes on the Mind — which were a crude forecast of the system at which he labored for the rest of his days — and to a few incidental flashes that illumine his forensic argumentations. The American mind is immeasurably the poorer that he was not permitted to bring into order his accumulated meditations.

scholarly journals Re-Thinking Atonement in Jonathan Edwards and New England Theology

Perichoresis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-99
Author(s):  
S. Mark Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Substitution Model ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Penal Substitution

Abstract Jonathan Edwards′ New England theology has a great deal more to say that is of contemporary doctrinal interest than it is often credited with, particularly as it relates to the doctrine of atonement. This article explores several anomalous claims made be this 18th and 19th century tradition, and in this way, challenges the recent and growing consensus that Edwards espoused the penal substitution model and his successors a moral government model. I argue that of all that is yet to be considered about their doctrine of atonement, we ought to begin with those claims made about the nature and demands of divine justice.

A Note on Platonism in the Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards

1959 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rufus Suter
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Theological School

Recent published allusions to Platonism in the minds of Calvinists, and the compatibility of its position there, brings back the memory of Professor William Wallace Fenn's interpretation of the thought of Jonathan Edwards, in lectures more than twenty-five years ago at the Harvard Theological School. Since this interpretation is no longer popular among writers, it might be of interest to mention it again. Professor Fenn liked to picture Edwards as the protagonist of a New England Tragedy. There was tragedy in the outward failures of his life. But the more devastating tragedy was his inward failure as a Christian philosopher. This, according to Fenn's interpretation, arose from Edwards' self-conscious awareness of being unable to reconcile his Platonism with his Calvinism.

Building Bensalem at Massachusetts Bay: Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of Eden in Early Modern New England

2010 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-606
Author(s):  
Zachary Mcleod Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Religious Leaders

Francis Bacon's influence on seventeenth-century New England has long passed unnoticed, but his plan for the restoration of prelapsarian intellectual perfections guided John Winthrop's initial colonization efforts, shaped New England's educational policies, and had an impact on civic and religious leaders from John Cotton to Jonathan Edwards.

scholarly journals ПОЛІТИКО-ПРАВОВІ АСПЕКТИ ЗАКОНОДАВЧОГО ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ ВИБОРЧОГО ПРОЦЕСУ В СУЧАСНІЙ УКРАЇНІ

2019 ◽  
pp. 134-144
Author(s):  
Г. М. Нечаєва
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Will ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
The Stability

This article examines the stages of the electoral process based on the legislation of Ukraine on elections since the proclamation of independent Ukraine until now. Considerable attention is paid to the disclosure of the concept of "electoral process", since democracy and the legitimacy of the entire system of public authorities depend to the electoral democracy. On the basis of various points of view of scientists, scholars of lawyers it can be concluded that the electoral process as a legal category is an independent legal institution of constitutional law, which should be understood as a set of constitutional and procedural norms governing the formation of representative bodies of the state and other elected bodies of state power and bodies of local self-government, election of state officials. The issue of the legislative support of the electoral process in Ukraine, the problem of the formation of a system of electoral legislation in Ukraine on the basis of which the electoral process takes place - elections of the President of Ukraine, people's deputies of Ukraine, deputies of local councils and village, town and city mayors. Adequate reflection of the will of the citizens on the formation of a system of government, the creation of conditions for free and deliberate expression of will require not only the legislative consolidation of the principles of free and fair elections, but also detailed legal regulation of procedures for conducting an election campaign, determination of the status of the subjects of the electoral process, their rights and obligations defining the results of elections, etc. The necessity of formation and establishment of a stable electoral culture of voters and the stability of electoral legislation for ensuring the proper realization of the electoral rights of Ukrainian citizens is indicated. However, the main problem is not so much in adopting laws that would comply with generally accepted democratic principles, but in ensuring compliance with these principles in practice, which does not always lie in the field of legislative regulation. In order to ensure legality in the process of organizing and holding elections, the functioning and interaction of all branches of state power, local self-government bodies and public associations must be agreed upon.

scholarly journals Edwards on the Incompatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will

Sententiae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Oleh Bondar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Fatalism ◽  
Nelson Pike ◽  
Necessity Of The Past

In the book “Freedom of the Will”, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) put forward a strong ar-gument for theological fatalism. This argument, I suppose, can be considered as the universal basis for discussion between Fatalists and Anti-Fatalists in the 20th century, especially in the context of the most powerful argument for fatalism, introduced by Nelson Pike. The argument of Edwards rests upon the following principles: (a) if something has been the case in the past, it has been the case necessarily (Necessity of the past); (b) if God knows something (say A), it is not the case that ~A is possible (Infallibility of God`s knowledge). Hence, Edwards infers that if God had foreknowledge that A, then A is necessary, and it is not the case that someone could voluntarily choose ~A. The article argues that (i) the Edwards` inference Kgp → □p rests upon the modal fallacy; (ii) the inference „God had a knowledge that p will happen, therefore „God had a knowledge that p will happen” is the proposition about the past, and hence, the necessarily true proposition“ is ambiguous; thus, it is not the case that this proposition necessarily entails the impossibility of ~p; (iii) it is not the case that p, being known by God, turns out to be necessary. Thus, we can avoid the inference of Edwards that if Kgp is a fact of the past, then we cannot freely choose ~p. It has also been shown that the main provisions of the argument of Edwards remain significant in the context of contemporary debates about free will and foreknowledge (Theories of soft facts, Anti-Ockhamism, theories of temporal modal asymmetry, „Timeless solution”). Additionally, I introduce a new challenge for fatalism – argument from Brouwerian axiom.

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