Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
True religion consists chiefly in holy affections — Edwards's twelve signs distinguishing genuine spiritual experience from its counterfeits
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (Mid (Northampton pastorate; the major work of evangelical reflection)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
Newtonian-substantival time as the background; God's eternal decree determines the temporal unfolding of grace in the elect.
Space
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
Newtonian background space; the inward space of the soul as the relevant theological subject.
Matter
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
Embodied human life; the body as the medium of the soul's affections and behaviours.
Observer
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
The regenerate believer, embodied, with the new spiritual sense bestowed by grace. Plural, both active in moral life and passive in receiving grace. Personal-providential God as ultimate.
Energy
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
The affections themselves — the dynamic energetic structure of human responsiveness to divine reality.
Information
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
The transformed self-knowledge of the regenerate, with its characteristic structure of affections, preserved through perseverance.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Religious Affections has been criticised both by less-evangelical Protestants (for too sharply distinguishing the regenerate from the unregenerate) and by stricter Reformed theologians (for too much emphasis on experience as the test of regeneration). Edwards's relation to the broader Awakening movement and to its excesses (which he himself helped catalyse in 1734-35 Northampton) is a continuing question. The work's status as both a defence of the Awakening and a criticism of its excesses gives it a dialectical structure that has been a continuing point of debate in Edwards scholarship (Goen, Marsden, Murray, Smith).