ABSTRACT
Jonathan Edwards and John Henry Newman share at least two characteristics: both showed creative genius in their reshaping of Anglo-American religious thought, and neither is known for his interest in non-Christian religions. Yet both were stimulated by polemical challenges to investigate the religions, and each devoted considerable attention to the question of how Christian faith relates to other faiths. Each concluded that God is at work in all the world, both scattering truth among the religions and probably saving some of those outside Judaism and Christianity. Parents are the 'instruments of God's bounties to their children', and food, clothing, medicine are all gifts from providence, but none come immediately from God. And at certain important points in the history of providence, God gave truth to his Church through paganism, and the Holy Spirit guided the Church to collect these truths as it assembled its own traditions.
