Isaac Watts: Reason, Passion and the Revival of Religion by Graham Beynon

Abstract

Reviewed by: Isaac Watts: Reason, Passion and the Revival of Religion by Graham Beynon Madeleine Forell Marshall Graham Beynon. Isaac Watts: Reason, Passion and the Revival of Religion. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Pp. viii + 220. $128.00. This is a helpful book for any student of the long, prolific, and varied career of Watts—theologian, preacher, educator, lyric poet, hymn writer, and kindly guide to reasonable Dissenters in Britain, in America, and on the Continent. Mr. Beynon's goal, however, is not to trace this influence but rather to explain how Watts insisted on the compatibility of head and heart (reason and passion) under the direction of the Holy Spirit. He updated "puritanism" by asking that faith make good, clear sense to his contemporaries. He honored the place of the "affections" (passions) and saw them as essential to the Christian worldview. Studies of religious thought can lose even the best-intentioned readers in the dense forests of controversy and denominational politics, often leaving them in the thickets of obscure categories and contending definitions. Mr. Beynon manages to place Watts in the context of religious and philosophical understanding of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries without much trouble or confusion. We are grateful for his remarkably straightforward writing. My resistance to his approach is, I suspect, largely a matter of a different disciplinary orientation. As a literary historian rather than philosophical theologian, I resist the foundational binary that powers the study. The idea that our passions are naturally in opposition to our reason seems simply untrue, if only because all significant literature demonstrates both powerful affect (passion) and coherent clarity (reasonableness); surely the Book of Job encompasses both. And this resistance breeds further doubts. That hymns worked in Watts's day because of a new belief in the natural goodness of humanity is unconvincing if only because of the passionate affect of many of the Psalms. Similarly, conversion was not a seventeenth-century phenomenon but surely grounded in biblical literature, particularly the conversion of Paul. A theologian trying to localize events can and should analyze what it means at any particular time, but a literary historian may summon parallel examples from a much wider range. The suggestion that the positive role of passions is only now, with Watts, on the rise will surely trouble anyone who admires the passions of Donne and his contemporaries. The poetry of Herbert must remind us that the direct, plain (reasonable) style was valued well before the eighteenth century. A related resistance proceeds from a practical problem with the attempt to found everything in philosophy. If preaching, song, and prayer all proceed from reasoned premises, the experiential—and passionate—heart of the matter shrivels and dies. This distortion is anticipated in Mr. Beynon's introduction, where he declares that "It is Watts' modified Puritan position on reason and passion, then, that functions as the driver for his practical works on preaching, praise and prayer." In what devotional or pastoral universe are such foundational activities as preaching, song, and prayer driven by philosophy? Watts admittedly defends and defines his practice, but for most of his congregants, the texts are primary. This is not to fault Mr. Beynon's good work on Watts's "critical adaptation" of Locke mostly having to do with sin, particularly [End Page 113] the sinful body; the Lockean influence on the educational texts is clear. Just so the broad definition of reason and the part it plays in "our recovery from the fall and hence part of God's redemptive purposes" makes helpful sense. One of the real pleasures here is the author's excellent use of Watts's original texts—both prose and poetry. And always, Mr. Beynon carefully contextualizes Watts, comparing him to other theologians of his day, whether Jonathan Edwards or the Pietists of Halle. Literary resistance will not easily be won over, however, and when we read that "Watts is, overall, far more positive about the role of the passions than most of his contemporaries," we must wish that our author had qualified his declaration. Presumably he means only contemporary theologians, not poets, novelists, playwrights, or composers. Bach and Handel are intensely affective, surely. The second half...