Analogy: A Neglected Theme in Jonathan Edwards and Its Pertinence to Contemporary Theological Debates

Abstract

Readers may be forgiven if they have forgotten the curious diagrams that Edwards used in some of his early philosophical writings. It is easy to miss them.These diagrams showed little dots, and were accompanied by comments on how these dots, when placed in a symmetrical and proportioned arrangement, were more beautiful and harmonious than if they had been set down in random way.1 What was Edwards getting at? And what could he have meant in his mysterious statement that “being, if we examine narrowly, is nothing else but proportion.”2 My argument here is that these little diagrams contain clues regarding something basic to Edward’s theology, namely, a doctrine of analogy that undergirds Edwards’s approach to theology.