William Law was an Anglican divine who started his career in the church by being thrown out of Cambridge for his Jacobitism. His ministry was primarily in Putney, where he influenced, inter alia, the Wesleys. After a decade or so, he retired to Kings Cliffe where he lived for some twenty years. His writings during this point became increasing mystical, perhaps due to an encounter with Jakob Boehme, the German mystic.
In his book The Spirit of Love, written during the period of his retirement, there is an interesting argument raised as to the efficacy of Reason. Let me present it to you as Law does:
Law began the book, the first part of which takes the form of a letter to a friend of his, by writing:
My Dear Friend,
You had no Occasion to make any Apology for the Manner of your Letter to me, for though you very well know that I have as utter an aversion to waste my Time and Thoughts in Matters of theological Debate as in any Contentions merely of a worldly Nature, as knowing that the Former are generally as much, if not more, hurtful to the Heart of Man than the Latter; yet as your Objections rather tend to stir up the Powers of Love than the wrangle of a rational Debate, so I consider them only as Motives and Occasions of edifying both you and myself with the Truth…
– William Law, The Spirit of Love
Later on, he writes:
For Reason can no more alter or exalt any one Property of Life in the Soul, and bring it into its perfect State, than it can add one Cubit to the Stature of the Body…
Therefore … Reason, which is to raise the Soul to its true Perfection, is so far from being the Religion of Nature, that it is quite unnatural… For since Reason can neither give Life nor Death to any one Thing in Nature…, every Thing, dead and alive, gives forth a Demonstration, that Nature asks no Counsel of Reason, nor stays to be directed by it. Hold it therefore for a certain Truth, that you can have no Good come into your Soul, but only by the one Way of a Birth from above…
And thus you see the infallible Truth, and absolute Necessity, of Christian Redemption; it is the most demonstrable Thing in all Nature.– The Deity must become Man, take a Birth in the fallen Nature, be united to it, become the Life of it, or the natural Man must of all Necessity be forever and ever in the Hell of his own Hunger, Anguish, Contrariety, and Self-Torment; and all for this plain Reason, because Nature is, and can be, nothing else, but this Variety of Self-Torment, till the Deity is manifested and dwelling in it.
These three excerpts form the core of Law’s argument against the power of reason. (It is worth noting that it is only part of the broader argument in favour of the indwelling of the believer by what Law calls the Spirit of Love.) It almost seems that if Law is right, perhaps we should agree with him to refrain from “Matters of theological Debate” altogether.
But the heart of Law’s argument is in fact militating in another direction. It is somewhat surprising to note, given his strong words against reason, that Law in fact uses a great deal of reason in his argument: and in the end, he calls the necessity of Redemption “the most demonstrable Thing in all Nature”. Law is in fact committed to reason. He believes it the best way to convince the reader of his point, which is that reason is powerless to achieve perfection.
Of course, Law is assuming that reason acts on its own. Reason, with only reason to draw upon, may well leave us in “Hunger, Anguish, Contrariety and Self-Torment”. Only someone or something able to change our nature can set us free from that self-torment. Law wishes to suggest that the Love of God is this external agent able to change us. In other words, Law’s argument points us not away from Reason but towards God’s grace. And at the most profound level he is absolutely right: the more we think about our own lives the more convinced we become of our need for a Saviour.
But perhaps there is a more superficial application of his argument. Law hesitates to engage in theological argument because he sees it as “hurtful to the Heart of Man”. And theological reason, by itself, is indeed hurtful. It leaves us as we were before, most probably. Yet with the difference that we are now, intellectually at least, in opposition to the reasoner. It is not surprising that theological blogging, to pick an example, is prone to degenerate into vigorous personal attack. Thus far we have been following along with Law’s argument against Reason.
But now, rather than reject theological reasoning, let us argue with Law that it points us to God’s grace. How remarkable! What if our theological argument tended “to stir up the Powers of Love”? What if our debates left us not still “in the wrangle of a rational Debate” but somewhere else: in praise of God?
[Justin Taylor (whom I heartily urge you to read if you do not already) links to two helpful articles on the subject of blogging to the glory of God.]
