ABSTRACT
In recent philosophy of religion, there has been some attention given to the doctrines of divine creation and conservation of the world. This essay is an attempt to analyse where Jonathan Edwards's doctrine of creation and conservation should be placed along the continuum of views on these matters. First, we shall examine three candidate theories of creation and conservation. These comprise a strong conservation thesis, a continuous creation thesis and an occasionalistic thesis. Then Edwards's view will be placed alongside these others. In the process, we shall also see that his view involves a particular take on several central issues on the question of how persons persist through time. Finally, we shall turn to consider a recent objection to the notion that Edwards endorsed occasionalism, from Sang Lee's monograph, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards}
Three Views on Creation and Conservation
To begin with, let us take each of the three theses on creation and conservation just mentioned, in turn. Each of these views has received a considerable amount of attention in recent literature.2 In what follows, I shall assume, unless otherwise stated, that a time index refers to a particular time slice, as do related terms like 'moment' and 'instant'. The notion of a time slice I am using is that of a temporally durationless moment, x refers to any given concrete particular, and t refers to a time index, primed as required.
