"the whole course of nature, with all that belongs to it, all its laws and methods, and constancy and regularity, continuance and proceeding, is an arbitrary constitution. In this sense, the continuance of the very being of the world and all its parts, as well as the manner of continued being, depends entirely on an arbitrary constitution… Thus it appears, if we consider matters strictly, there is no such thing as any identity or oneness in created objects, existing at different times, but what depends on God’s sovereign constitution." Jonathan Edwards
That is from Edwards' book Original Sin, a book much recommended back when I used to be a Calvinist. But looking at it again now, I find myself puzzling why it was so highly recommended, given that Edwards presents a world that is so random and arbitrary that it requires a nominalist-diety to reinvest the world with meaning through arbitrary will-acts.
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I may have misrepresented nominalism, and when you have time to read my articles I would be happy to interact with any specific concerns. I do not recall associating it with sheer random arbitrariness, but I might have. However, to address the question of what Edwards himself means, it does seam that 'arbitrary' is an appropriate word, at least within the overall context of the argument he developed in Original Sin. In this work, Edwards set himself the problem of explaining how it can be that Adam’s posterity are said to participate in Adam’s sin and therefore share his guilt. In developing his defence of original sin, Edwards argued that the patterns that exist in the world in general, and human nature in particular, are devoid of natural logic but achieve their identity simply through God’s arbitrary constitution. For Edwards, Adam’s posterity participate in Adam’s sin for no reason other than because God says they do.
Accordingly, he argued again that there is no inherent unity between things in the past and things in the present since God is continually recreating the universe ex nihilo throughout every millisecond of time. As Edwards expressed it, ‘All dependent existence whatsoever is in a constant flux, ever passing and returning; renewed every moment…’ The problem that arises is obvious: if there is no natural continuity between the past and the present, then in what sense can we speak of a thing or a class of things subsisting through time? And if we cannot speak of things subsisting through time, then in what sense may we speak of humankind having an identity or fixed relation to God? These were the very questions Edwards sought to answer. To avoid a world that consisted in little more than a jumble of particulars in a constant state of flux, he asserted that identity exists because God simply considers things to be one, and imputes relations to them. Significantly, however, these relations remain nominal rather than actual.
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Edwards' nominalist orientation led him to depart from traditional Calvinism on the question of human guilt. The Westminster Confession had reflected Calvinist orthodoxy when it taught that human sinfulness arises from a totally depraved nature that each person inherits from his or her parents going all the way back to Adam. In Edwards’ reworking of this doctrine, humankind’s continuity with the sin of Adam and Eve occurs through divine constitution rather than inherited nature. If God can unify the life of a single individual, so that the person’s past, present and future is considered as one, then He can do so with respect to the whole human race. Thus, it is through God’s sovereign decree that the posterity of Adam is considered to be one with him and therefore to share in his guilt. As Edwards said: "Identity of consciousness depends wholly on a law of nature; and so, on the sovereign will and agency of God; and therefore, that personal identity, and so the derivation of the pollution and guilt of past sins in the same person, depends on an arbitrary divine constitution." The moral identity that human beings share with Adam is purely nominal, arising simply because God decreed that there be a shared federal identity and not because it exists in any external ontological sense. ‘God’ Edwards stated, ‘thus deals with mankind, because he looks upon them as one with their first father, and so treats them as sinful and guilty by his apostasy…’ Or again, ‘The imputation of Adam’s first sin consists in nothing else than this, that his posterity are viewed as in the same place with their father, and are like him.’
The continuity that grants meaning to a universal such as human nature, no less than the continuity that gives identity to all the particulars of the world, is constituted with reference only to the divine will and not any properties inherent in creation itself. Nature emerges out of naming rather than naming reflecting any prior ordering. In suggesting that the unity of the human race is no longer rooted in an organic connection, but ‘depends on an arbitrary divine constitution’, Edwards was saying nothing different to what he believed he had already proved about identity in general. The identity of rocks, trees, heavenly bodies and everything in the universe exist as meaningful entities, not because of any inherent properties within those things themselves which persist through time and distinguish those entities from other things in the world, but simply because God declares that each thing be continuous with itself within the matrix of constant flux that comprises the continually recreated universe.
Consistent with his nominalist framework, Edwards suggested that when we speak of the ‘laws of nature’ we simply mean the way God has happened to constitute things independent to any natural organization within those things themselves. God simply wills there to be a oneness of identity among successive acts or conditions, and then communicates to those things certain ‘properties, relations, and circumstances’ as a consequence. Edwards acknowledged that this remains an ‘arbitrary constitution’ since it is dependent wholly on God’s naming activity and not on any properties intrinsic in the object themselves.
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This is not my interpretation, but what Edwards himself argues, for he wrote: If the existence of created substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the effect of God’s immediate power, in that moment, without any dependence on prior existence, as much as the first creation out of nothing, then what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new effect; and simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain established method. And there is no identity or oneness in the case, but what depends on the arbitrary constitution of the Creator; who by his wise sovereign establishment so unites these successive new effects, that he treats them as one, by communicating to them like properties, relations, and circumstances; and so, leads us to regard and treat them as one."
That is arbitrariness right there, as we mean the term. Edwards himself defined ‘arbitrary’ as ‘a constitution which depends on nothing but the divine will’ and he wrote that ‘the whole course of nature, with all that belongs to it, all its laws and methods, and constancy and regularity, continuance and proceeding, is an arbitrary constitution. In this sense, the continuance of the very being of the world and all its parts, as well as the manner of continued being, depends entirely on an arbitrary constitution…’ To illustrate his point, Edwards used the example of the relationship between a full grown tree and the little sprout from which it grew. In such a case, we ‘look upon all as one’ because it has been God’s pleasure ‘to constitute an union.’ The same principle applies to those things which do not appear to have any natural connection to each other (for example, Adam’s sin and his subsequent progeny): "Some things, being most simply considered, are entirely distinct and very diverse; which yet are so united by the established law of the Creator. In some respects and with regard to some purposes and effects, that by virtue of that establishment it is with them as if they were one." Even the life of the individual, which appears to have a natural oneness and identity because of consciousness, only becomes a single unit by virtue of God’s arbitrary constitution. The same is true of the relation between body and soul, which Edwards argued is ‘entirely regulated and limited, according to the sovereign pleasure of God, and the constitution he has been pleased to establish.’ He continued: ‘Thus it appears, if we consider matters strictly, there is no such thing as any identity or oneness in created objects, existing at different times, but what depends on God’s sovereign constitution.
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Tim Enloe
mentioned Oakley. Here is what Oakley says about the "arbitrariness"
of the nominalist world: "The inclination now was to take the divine
omnipotence as the fundamental principle, to accord to the divine will the
primacy in God’s workings ad extra, and to understand the order of the created
world (both the moral order governing human behaviour and the natural order
governing the behaviour of irrational beings) no longer as a participation in a
divine reason that is in some measure transparent to the human intellect, but rather
as the deliverance of an inscrutable divine will. The hallowed doctrine of the
divine ideas came now under challenge, and with it the epistemological realism…
The tendency, therefore, was to set God over against the world he had created
and which was constantly dependent upon him, to view it now as an aggregate of
particular entities linked solely by external relationships,
comprehensible…each in isolation from the others, and, as a result, open to
investigation only by some form of empirical endeavor."
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