Positive Mimesis in Jonathan Edwards’s Charity and Its Fruits

Abstract

When a great thinker sees a universal, teleological pattern at work in nature—a sweeping vision of creation—it is tempting to test such a view with the work of other great thinkers. This paper explores such a test between two such minds, that of the 18^th-century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards and the 20^th-century French intellectual René Girard