"Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain!"
About this Quote
Edwards snaps the halo off “mystery” and shows the wiring underneath. In a religious culture that often treats the mysterious as a badge of reverence - a sign that the divine is too lofty for human categories - he flips the valuation: mystery isn’t sacred fog, it’s a synonym for not knowing. The line is blunt on purpose. By collapsing “mystery” into “ignorance,” he denies people the comfort of dressing uncertainty in velvet language.
The second clause tightens the screw. “If we were omniscient” is an impossible hypothetical that exposes how much “mystery” depends on our limits rather than on reality’s supposed inscrutability. The rhetoric is clean, almost mathematical: omniscience would make “all” plain. That totalizing word is doing work. It dares the reader to consider how often we stop inquiry early because “mystery” feels like an endpoint, a respectable shrug.
Context matters: as a 19th-century theologian, Edwards is writing amid a period when science, higher biblical criticism, and new intellectual currents were pressuring inherited doctrines. One common defense was to retreat into the language of mystery. Edwards’ intent reads like an internal correction aimed at believers: don’t confuse reverence with evasion; don’t outsource hard questions to pious ambiguity.
The subtext is moral as much as epistemic. Calling ignorance by a prettier name can become a permission slip - for clerical authority, for intellectual laziness, for keeping doubt safely unexamined. Edwards pushes toward a faith (or at least a theology) that can tolerate clarity, even if clarity is unsettling.
The second clause tightens the screw. “If we were omniscient” is an impossible hypothetical that exposes how much “mystery” depends on our limits rather than on reality’s supposed inscrutability. The rhetoric is clean, almost mathematical: omniscience would make “all” plain. That totalizing word is doing work. It dares the reader to consider how often we stop inquiry early because “mystery” feels like an endpoint, a respectable shrug.
Context matters: as a 19th-century theologian, Edwards is writing amid a period when science, higher biblical criticism, and new intellectual currents were pressuring inherited doctrines. One common defense was to retreat into the language of mystery. Edwards’ intent reads like an internal correction aimed at believers: don’t confuse reverence with evasion; don’t outsource hard questions to pious ambiguity.
The subtext is moral as much as epistemic. Calling ignorance by a prettier name can become a permission slip - for clerical authority, for intellectual laziness, for keeping doubt safely unexamined. Edwards pushes toward a faith (or at least a theology) that can tolerate clarity, even if clarity is unsettling.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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