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Scripture and Providence: the Hutchinsonian Quest to Save The Scripture and Providence: The Hutchinsonian Quest to Save the Old Testament by David Paul Aikins Ney A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Wycliffe College and the Theology Department of the Toronto School of Theology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology awarded by Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto © Copyright by David Paul Aikins Ney 2016 Scripture and Providence: The Hutchinsonian Quest to Save the Old Testament David Paul Aikins Ney Doctor of Theology Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto 2016 ABSTRACT The conviction that the Old Testament struggles to function as Scripture for Christians in the modern west has a long history. The first to identify the problem was likely eighteenth-century natural philosopher John Hutchinson. Hutchinson complained that the Old Testament had fallen into disrepute because, while people were praising Newton as the font of natural philosophical wisdom, they should have been looking to Moses. Hutchinson accordingly devised an ingenious method of interpreting the words of Moses as natural philosophical emblems. Hutchinson’s disciples applied Hutchinson’s method to the full range of Scriptural words. In the process, they made the providential significance of the full range of natural and historical objects dependent upon their reinterpretation as Scriptural figures. The way the Hutchinsonians were able to make all Scriptural words beneficial for providential discernment enabled them to defend the Old Testament as an eQual partner in the Christian canon of Scripture. It was as a historical document that the Old Testament was called into Question in eighteenth-century England. In a context captivated by the ability of the new empirical science to illumine the providential order of nature, people questioned the ability of history and historically contingent disciplines to provide similar illumination. ii It is thus that Newton’s protégé Samuel Clarke dismisses the Old Testament as antithetical to principles of natural religion. The arduous journey to resuscitate the Old Testament I document, therefore, was a battle against the Newtonian assumption that nature alone could serve as the basis of a providential vision of the world. It was equally, however, a struggle against the Newtonian assumption that conceptual frameworks should be imposed on history to locate providential order. Hutchinsonian Scriptural interpretation rejects conceptual approaches to providential discernment and therefore denies that philosophies of history are necessary or beneficial. The alternative path to providential discernment it provides is an invitation to people of all ages and intellectual abilities to reflect upon the objects they encounter in their everyday lives in light of Scriptural revelation. And as such, it is not just a call to acknowledge the Old Testament. It is an invitation to intellectual humility. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank The Rt. Rev. Dr. George Sumner and the entire community of Wycliffe College for creating a community that attends not just to cognitive growth, but also to the formation of the entire person. I am especially grateful for the way that this community provides a uniQue atmosphere to reflect upon the nature and meaning of Christian Scripture by bringing biblical scholars and theologians together in a common quest. I would also like to thank my mom, my brother Stephen, Jeff Boldt, and James Vander Woulde for the astute and sacrificial help they provided in revising my text. Words of thanks to The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner are more difficult to adeQuately articulate. Ephraim, the way you manage to pursue your academic vocation as part of your call to your pastoral office is remarkable and exemplary. Thank you as well for showing me that intellectual humility does not mean being a wet noodle. And above all, thank you for living out your conviction that we find ourselves in a “State of Probation” in plain view of us all. And my dear Jamie. The sacrifices you have made in seeing your perpetual student through to the end have been remarkable. Thank you so much for your patience and support. I pray that God would bless you richly on this account, and that you would come to see that your sacrifices have been well made. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 1 The Waning of Old Testament Authority in Eighteenth-Century England ..................... 7 Primitivism and the Historicization of the Old Testament .................................................. 10 Newtonianism and Devolutionary History ................................................................................ 18 The Hutchinsonian Quest to Save the Old Testament ........................................................... 23 CHAPTER ONE: ISAAC NEWTON ........................................................................................................................ 32 Isaac Newton, Philologist ................................................................................................................... 35 Newton’s Primitivism .......................................................................................................................... 41 Newton’s Devolutionary Philosophy of History ....................................................................... 45 The Problem of Human Testimony ................................................................................................ 52 Saving Language from History ......................................................................................................... 56 Saving Scripture through Mathematics ....................................................................................... 60 Mathematics and Corruption ........................................................................................................... 65 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................ 73 CHAPTER TWO: SAMUEL CLARKE ...................................................................................................................... 77 English Spiritualism and the Status of the Old Testament .................................................. 79 Clarke’s Importance ............................................................................................................................. 83 Clarke on Natural and Revealed Religion ................................................................................... 89 Clarke’s Dispensational Scheme ..................................................................................................... 96 Church History: The Devolution of Revealed Religion ....................................................... 101 The Old Testament: The Devolution of Natural Religion .................................................. 112 The Trinity and the Old Testament ............................................................................................ 117 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 121 CHAPTER THREE: JOHN HUTCHINSON ............................................................................................................... 124 Hutchinson’s Natural Philosophy ................................................................................................ 126 The Covenant in the Cherubim ....................................................................................................... 135 Emblems and Hieroglyphs ............................................................................................................. 139 Hutchinson’s Hieroglyphic Method ............................................................................................ 144 Idolatry, Linguistic Devolution, and Scripture ....................................................................... 149 Emblematic Decontextualization ................................................................................................. 155 John Hutchinson, Newtonian ......................................................................................................... 162 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 166 v CHAPTER FOUR: GEORGE WATSON .................................................................................................................. 169 The Construction of Hutchinsonianism .................................................................................... 170 Hutchinson and Oxonian Hutchinsonianism .......................................................................... 175 Watson and Oxonian Hutchinsonianism .................................................................................. 184 Watson’s Scriptural Emblematicism .......................................................................................... 189 Canonical Reading and Providential History .......................................................................... 193 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 206 CHAPTER FIVE: GEORGE HORNE ....................................................................................................................
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