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Little Lower than God: The Super-Angelic Anthropology of Edward Taylor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
Despite his arresting talents as a poet, Edward Taylor presents no comparable claims to originality as a theologian. Apparently this New Englander's mind was no match for that of Jonathan Edwards: most of Taylor's theological ideas were not only orthodox, but commonplace. Yet the poet's religious anthropology would seem to be one notable exception. In both prose and verse, Taylor is continually breaking into chants of heartfelt wonder over the exalted state bestowed upon human nature by Christ's redemption: “The Highest Design of Divine Wisdom, and the richest, and the most Glorious Design of Divine Grace … is pitched upon Mankinde, and Humane Nature. For higher exaltation Created Nature seems utterly incapable of than to be made partaker of all the Fulness of the Godheads, bodily.”
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982
References
1 Edward Taylor's Christographia, ed. Grabo, Norman S. (New Haven: Yale University, 1962) 159.Google Scholar Hereafter: Christographia.
2 Taylor often implies as much in the celebratory chants and can sometimes say explicitly that God's assumption of our common human nature “indeed gives the Pagan as reall propriety in Christ, and as true a Claim to him, as to the true Believer” (Christographia, 320). But the poet's logic on this score is variable: at other times he more cautiously assumes or specifies that such a drastic elevation in human dignity applies only to “Some of the Children of men” (Christographia, 316–17). See also Grabo's Introduction to Christographia, xxiv, xxvii–xxviii.
3 Cited in Stanford's, Donald E. edition of The Poems (New Haven: Yale University, 1960) 9.Google Scholar
4 See Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (The Christian Tradition 1; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1971) 133, 140, 197–98.Google Scholar Taylor cites Clement in this light in Christographia, 443.
5 The Saints' Everlasting Rest as cited in The Doubleday Devotional Classics (ed. Hinson, E. Glenn; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978) 1. 38Google Scholar; cf. Taylor's Christographia, 301–2.
6 As in Christographia, 57, 83, 95. Taylor's most direct definition of angels, included in his “Profession of Faith,” has been printed recently in Davis, Thomas M. and Davis, Virginia L., Edward Taylor's “Church Records” and Related Sermons, Vol. 1 of The Unpublished Writings of Edward Taylor (Boston: Twayne-G. K. Hall, 1981) 23.Google Scholar
7 Modern commentators point out that the Hebrew elohim may also be translated in the plural as “gods” —that is, members of Yahweh's divine council. Precise English renderings are elusive because in Jewish biblical belief “angels” might be mysterious, divine beings in the heavenly court, earthly appearances of God himself, or discrete emissaries from God as more commonly represented in Christian tradition.
8 Nor is it anywhere specified as an option in the Continental selections assembled by Heppe, Heinrich in Reformed Dogmatics (trans. Thomson, G. T.; London: Allen & Unwin, 1950).Google Scholar
9 Angelographia or a Discourse Concerning the Nature and Power of the Holy Angels (Boston, 1696). This work, which was in Taylor's library, does not argue the revised anthropology as does Mather's other work cited later on. Useful background on English Puritan attitudes is supplied by West, Robert H. in Milton and the Angels (Athens: University of Georgia, 1955) 21–60.Google Scholar
10 Danielou, Jean, Les anges et leur mission d'après les pères de l'Èglise (Paris: Chevetogne, 1953) 85–86.Google Scholar Meditations 2.157B, 43–44 and 2.159, 41 are two examples of this imagery, which also appears in Taylor's 1694 sermons on the Lord's Supper.
11 Bolton is cited by White, Helen C. in her English Devotional Literature, 1600–1640 (University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature; Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1931) 198.Google Scholar
12 The Mystery of Christ opened and Applyed in several sermons, concerning the Person, Office, and Glory of Jesus Christ (Boston, 1686) 110–11.
13 As in “The Experience” (by probable date), 1.8, and 1.10.
14 Clement Protrepticus 1.8.4; see Pelikan, Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 155, 206, 216, 233, 344–45; and Kelly, J. N. D., Early Christian Doctrines (2d ed.; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978) 172, 179, 184, 352.Google ScholarGrabo, Norman (Edward Taylor [New York: Twayne, 1961] 75)Google Scholar correctly related Taylor's deifying tendencies to Christian mysticism in general without mentioning the patristic context. And Scheick, William J. (The Will and the Word: The Poetry of Edward Taylor [Athens: University of Georgia, 1974] 44)Google Scholar proposed with reason that Taylor's incorporation of humanity into the Trinity — if not his angelology — may have been influenced by St. Augustine writing on The Trinity. A medievalist colleague of mine, A. S. McGrade, informs me that the super-angelic anthropology was also set forth in the Middle Ages by John Scotus Erigena in his De divisione naturae. Erigena's version of the argument differs considerably from Taylor's, however, and there is no evidence that Taylor knew Erigena.
15 Irenaeus Adv. haer. 5.36.3; cited in Early Christian Fathers, ed. and trans. Richardson, Cyril C. (New York: Macmillan, 1970) 397.Google Scholar Taylor cites another section of Irenaeus' work in Christographia, 289.
16 Grabo, Edward Taylor, 73–74.
17 Mather, The Mystery of Christ, 201.