Jonathan Edwards' Sublime Book of Nature
Gordon Miller looks at the 18th-century American philosopher, who influenced the transcendentalists and other 'green prophets'.
In the face of growing ecological concerns in recent decades, many environmentalists are emphasising the need to cultivate a renewed sense of the sacredness of nature. A variety of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions are drawn upon to inspire these efforts. New England Puritanism, however, which represents the strand of Western Christianity that historians have long associated with the rise of capitalism and the development of modern science, and that Lynn White Jr. has depicted as perhaps the world's least 'earth-friendly' religion, is not often seen as a likely source of ecological insights. Nevertheless, certain elements of it can shed light on possible routes to a re-enchantment of nature. These elements can be discovered with particular profit in the works of Jonathan Edwards, whose spiritual reading of the 'book of nature' arose from his early immersion in the natural world and from his belief in the power of the word.
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