Avihu Zakai

Jonathan Edwards and the Language of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning

For a long time Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was thought of more as a preacher of hellfire and revival than as a theologian, and rather as a Calvinist theologian than a philosopher of importance, and he was dismissed accordingly. Yet Edwards was more than a hellfire preacher, more than a theologian. This New England divine was one of the rare individuals anywhere to recognize and answer the challenges posed to traditional Christian belief by the emergence of new modes of thought in early modern history - the new ideas of the scientific thought and the Enlightenment. His force of mind is evident in his exposition of the poverty of mechanical philosophy, which radically transformed the traditional Christian dialectic of God’s utter transcendence and divine immanence by gradually dimin-ishing divine sovereignty with respect to creation, providence, and redemption, thus leading to the disenchantment of the world. Edwards constructed a teleological and theological alternative to the prevailing mechanistic interpretation of the essential nature of reality, whose ultimate goal was the re-enchantment of the world by reconstituting the glory of God’s majestic sovereignty, power, and will within the order of creation.

The Rise of Modern Science and the Decline of Theology as the ‘Queen of Sciences’ in the Early Modern Era

Abstract The early modern period witnessed an important transformation in the Christian tradition of determining who had the authority to speak for nature and to read the Deitys mind in nature. This profound change was inextricable from the rise of modern science. This essay will argue that the development of modern scientific reasoning was preconditioned largely by the dethroning of theology from its status as the queen of sciences, with reference to the works of Nicolas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Impelled by the growing discrepancy between their new astronomical discoveries and traditional scholastic philosophical thought, they developed new conceptions and re-defined their relation to theology. To establish the science of astronomy on new foundations, they argued that Scripture was not intended to describe the phenomena of the world; hence theology had no business assessing the merit of astronomical arguments. These pioneers refused to accord any priority to theology in explaining and interpreting the phenomena of astronomy. They asserted that astronomy was not a ‘handmaiden to theology’ rather an authoritative means of speaking for nature. They all admitted that in relation to divine things, theology was indeed superior to all other sciences in explaining human salvation and redemption. On natural phenomena, however, its conventional role was no longer secure in the face of astronomical discoveries. Theology concerns transcendent issues, science mundane ones; the first deals with salvation and the second with the workings of nature.

The Gospel of Reformation: the Origins of the Great Puritan Migration

They [the Puritans] drew in a sea of matter, by applying all things unto their own company, which are any where spoken concerning divine favours and benefits bestowed upon the old commonwealth of Israel: concluding that as Israel was delivered out of Egypt, so they spiritually out of the Egypt of this worlds servile thraldom unto sin and superstition; as Israel was to root out the idolatrous nations, and to plant instead of them a people which feared God; so the same Lords good will and pleasure was now, that these new Israelites should under the conduct of other Joshuas, Samsons and Gideons, perform a work no less miraculous in casting out violently the wicked from the earth, and establishing the kingdom of Christ with perfect liberty.

Exile and interpretation: Popper's re-invention of the history of political thought

The essay explores how Popper used ‘critical interpretation’ to interpret Plato, Hegel and Marx idiosyncratically as his ‘war effort’ polemic against fascism waged from forced exile in New Zealand during WWII. ‘Critical interpretation’ was a form of scientific ‘critical rationalism’ adapted to textual interpretation. Exile spurred Popper to fight. ‘Critical interpretation’ was his method of fighting. The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism were the weapons he forged. As with our children, so with our theories, and ultimately with all the work we do: our products become largely independent of their makers. We gain more knowledge from our children or from our theories than we ever imparted to them. This is how we can lift ourselves out of the morass of our ignorance.1

THOMAS BRIGHTMAN AND ENGLISH APOCALYPTIC TRADITION

In English apocalyptic tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Thomas Brightman held a unique and important place. Brightmans interpretation of Revelation in fact constituted a unique philosophy of history which supplied the Puritans with coherent perceptions concerning both the meaning of their time in providential history and the crucial role of the saints in the time of the millennium at hand. Centuries of European history have been influenced by the Book of Revelation, for the meaningful solution it offers to the paradox of Gods people being persecuted in Gods world. By identifying the heaven of the Book of Revelation with earthly phenomena, Brightman was able to replace Augustines dualistic heaven/earth view of the cosmos with his own view of a cosmos marked by an essential dualism within the earthly realm. Brightmans holistic interpretation of history is significant for its enormous influence in England. Keywords: Book of Revelation; dualism; England; English apocalyptic tradition; Puritans; Thomas Brightman

The Theological Origins of Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of Nature

An analysis of the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) on natural philosophy, this article aims to show the affinities between the content and form of his philosophy of nature and some main features of medieval, scholastic and Renaissance thought: theology as the ‘queen of sciences’ (‘regina scientiarum’), science as ‘handmaiden to theology’ (‘philosophia ancilla theologiae’), the emblematic or typological understanding of world phenomena, and belief in the ‘great chain of being’ (‘scala naturae’). It argues that Edwardss works are inseparable from the school of ‘physico-theology’, the English followers of which set out to prove the being and attributes of God by the order and harmony of nature, and through their worship of the God of nature to show ‘the wisdom of God in creation’ in face of the threats which new modes of scientific thought and reasoning were posing to traditional Christian thought and belief in the early modern period.

Epilogue: Exile, Interpretation, and Alienation

In America (1947–1957), Auerbach belonged to a distinguished group of German-speaking intellectual exiles, including Leo Strauss, Hans Baron, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Ernst Cassirer, and Hannah Arendt. Their language and concepts were formed during the ideological and intellectual struggles of a specific, wretched moment in German history, and they all developed idiosyncratic interpretations and constructions of their disciplines in light of their battles against Nazism and fascism, directed by their common humanist ideology. In exile, each strove to save Western society from the menace of Nazism. As for Auerbach, two world wars, one in which he took an active part and was seriously wounded, as well as the upheavals of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism convinced him that the story of Western Europe in particular and Western civilization in general was not characterized by success. He defended Western humanist tradition with all his might, but he was not blind to its faults and shortcomings.

Mimesis: An Apologia for Western Judaeo-Christian Humanist Tradition in an Age of Peril, Tyranny, and Barbarism

In 1942, the most crucial year of World War II, which witnessed the battles of Stalingrad and El Alamein, Auerbach started writing Mimesis, his grand apologia for, or defense and justification of, the Western Judaeo-Christian humanist tradition. Like Saint Augustine and Blaise Pascal, to name only two famous apologists, Auerbach wrote his defense at the moment of greatest challenge. Other German-speaking Jewish exiles began writing their grand humanist defenses of Western civilization that year—Max Horkheimer and Theodor W.Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, Ernst Cassirer’s The Myth of the State, and Hans Baron’s The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance—and Thomas Mann conceived his novel Dr. Faustus. The year 1942 signified a great epistemological watershed in the intellectual history of the West.

Exile and Interpretation: The Struggle Against Aryan Philology and Nazi Barbarism

Begun in 1933, after the Nazi Revolution signaled the triumph of Aryan philology, and published in 1938, “Figura” provides an apologia for the Old Testament’s validity and credibility. It draws on the Christian figural interpretation of history—the view that Old Testament events and persons are figures, or prefigurations, of events and persons in the New Testament—to prove that the Old Testament is inseparable from the New Testament and Western culture and civilization as a whole, contrary to the racist and anti-Semitic claims of Aryan philology. Mined from the thick veins of medieval exegesis, “Figura” enlists philology to show that figural, not allegorical, interpretation guided Western Christianity until the Age of Enlightenment.

Dante and the “Discovery of European Representation of Man”

Auerbach’s Dante: Poet of the Secular World contained many concepts and themes that he would later address more broadly, especially in Mimesis. The books are marked by a crucial difference; closely following German philological tradition, Auerbach began his study of Dante with the classical Greek world, but in Mimesis, he abandoned this point of view and started with the Old Testament. Dante and Auerbach are connected by both the content and form of their literary styles. Dante’s Comedy cannot be separated from his experience of exile, which is an essential dimension of his journey from hell to heaven. Excluded from earth, he wanders the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso in search of a kingdom, or eternal life. Like him, Auerbach found his epiphany and took on his grand mission in exile.