John Edwards (1637-1726) was an Anglican Calvinist and would-be defender of Christian orthodoxy. Seemingly at the last minute, he tacked on to his Some Thoughts Concerning the Several Causes and Occasions of Atheism (1695) a critique of Locke’s Reasonableness. Guns blazing, he charged Locke (among other things) with promoting “Socinianism” (aka “Racovian” theology, i.e. the type of unitarian theology famously expounded by the Polish Brethren, aka the Minor Reformed Church of Poland in the 17th c.), with despising the epistles of the New Testament, and so promoting biblical ignorance, perhaps, speculated Edwards, in service to Roman Catholicism! After a somewhat unsatisfying reply by Locke, Edwards followed with Socinianism Unmask’d (1696), in which he objects that if Locke is right, every Muslim is automatically a Christian – which, of course, is absurd.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Trinities: "podcast episode 54 – John Edwards vs. John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity"
Here. A taste:
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5 comments:
Could be very interesting. I'll have to listen to it.
The term 'Anglican Calvinist' is foreign to me, at least outside of the context of England. I presume it refers to the Calvinist movements that emerged in England around the 16th century?
And I'm not sure whether Edwards can really be thought of as orthodox Calvinist. His soteriology is accepted in the Evangelical wing of the church (and some others) but it is not the soteriology of Calvin, and (although he would say otherwise) relies on human will more than TULIP would seem to allow.
Anglicanism's 39 Articles are influenced by Calvinism. The Anglican "high church" is more Catholic, the low church more fundamentalist/Calvinist.
Interesting stuff.
http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/the-strange-attempts-to-make-the-anglican-church-calvinist/
And there was a third wing (if that makes sense) in the Anglican Church: the latitudinarians. And as Dr. Waligore has informed us, there were theological unitarians in that wing.
That's where "latitudinarian Anglicanism" connects with Dr. Frazer's "theistic rationalism" or the "Christian-Deism" that Waligore describes.
Thanks. It is interesting stuff.
Here's all you need to know about the history of the Anglican Church. ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTRjWDW3JSg
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