Jonathan Edwards and Deification

Reconciling Theosis and the Reformed Tradition

James R. Salladin

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781514000472
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The doctrine of deification or theosis is typically associated with the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Indeed, the language of participation in the divine nature as a way to understand salvation often sounds like strange music in the ears of Western Christians despite passages like 2 Peter 1: 4 where it appears. However, recent scholarship has argued that the theologies of some of the most prominent figures in the history of the Western church, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley, share more in common with deification than has been acknowledged.In this New Explorations in Theology volume, theologian James Salladin considers the role of deification in the theology of another well-known Western theologian: Jonathan Edwards. In addition, he reflects upon the question of how Edwards's soteriology compares with the rest of the broader Reformed tradition.Here, we discover how Edwards's theology affirms what it means for sinners to be brought into the hands of a loving God.Featuring new monographs with cutting-edge research, New Explorations in Theology provides a platform for constructive, creative work in the areas of systematic, historical, philosophical, biblical, and practical theology.

1

Grace and Fullness

ON THE EVENING OF JULY 12, 1739, a young man walked alone and wrestled with God. He was a religious man; he knew his Puritan theology, and his soul writhed within him, at least in part, because he hated its core doctrine. God’s sovereignty was central to the system that formed his tradition, and it precluded any easy means of escape. He had sought to make himself sincere in religious devotion. He had strived to pray and fast well. He had rehearsed the doctrines of grace and tried to persuade himself, perhaps even God, that he renounced any hint of merit in his efforts. Yet, in the early weeks of July he came to see that all his religion was nothing more than “self-worship.”1 This carried a terminal diagnosis. If his best efforts could not turn his heart to God, then there could be no cure, and he stood on the brink of eternal damnation. He was learning a lesson he had not known previously, “that there could be no way prescribed whereby a natural man could, of his own strength, obtain that which is supernatural and utterly above the utmost stretch of nature to obtain by its own strength or out of the reach of the highest angel to give.”2 The natural could not touch the supernatural. The path from below was blocked. But what of the path from above?

Then, as I was walking in a dark thick grove, “unspeakable glory” seemed to open to the view and apprehension of my soul. . . . It was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had before. . . . I stood still and wondered and admired! I knew that I had never had seen before anything comparable to it for excellency and beauty: it was widely different from all the conceptions that ever I had had of God, or things divine. . . . And my soul “rejoiced with joy unspeakable” to see such a God, such a glorious divine being; and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied, that he should be God over all forever and ever. . . . Thus God, I trust, brought me to a hearty disposition to exalt him and set him on the throne, and . . . to aim at his honor and glory as King of the universe.3

David Brainerd’s conversion was dramatic, but it was not unique. Puritans and those under their influence had long experienced something like it, and the years just before and just after Brainerd’s conversion were particularly filled with episodes that followed the familiar pattern. What was needed, however, was a theological explanation of it.

By the time Brainerd experienced his new “apprehension . . . of God,” Jonathan Edwards was already deeply engaged in providing just such a theological explanation. He knew the experience firsthand, and he followed his Puritan forbearers in venturing a theologized theory of how the Spirit of God affects this work.4 Edwards’s approach was creative and innovative, and particularly so in how he framed the Creator-creature distinction.

The question of how God, as Creator, and humanity, as creature, related to each other was always just underneath the surface of eighteenth-century theological debate. Edwards’s Reformed heritage meant that he needed to avoid the Scylla of Arminianism, on the one hand, and the Charybdis of radical enthusiasm on the other.5 Both of these views were popular, and both represented a theory of the Creator-creature distinction that threatened Edwards’s orthodoxy.

Arminianism addressed the Creator-creature distinction and relation by allowing greater autonomy to the creature. The creature’s natural endowments allow, at least in principle, for a reaching out and an embrace of its end. Arminianism was always diverse, but even considered in its broad range it tended toward optimism about the creature’s natural capacity to embrace what God asked. Though Brainerd would not have owned the term Arminian during his spiritual struggle, the natural effort to grasp one’s supernatural end was his intuitive approach to religion.6 Ostensibly this established a degree of distance between God and the creature, because there was scope for the creature to act on its own. Yet on the other hand, by giving the creature autonomy, in whatever degree, Arminianism attributed to creatures (at least) one attribute that the Reformed tradition reserved for the Creator, for only God could be truly autonomous. Thus the Reformed tradition could view the Arminian effort to validate the creature’s natural autonomy as a thinly veiled attempt at a false self-deification, inevitably resulting in what Brainerd called self-worship.

At the same time the various radical enthusiast groups envisioned the creature’s direct union with God. These groups had waxed and waned for the previous century, and they often grew out of the Puritan mainstream. In their most radical forms they spoke of being “Godded with God,” so that the creature came to partake of the divine essence.7 If Arminianism ostensibly respected the distinction between creature and Creator, then the radical enthusiasts ostensibly achieved an intimacy between them. Yet, once again, and with a certain irony, the assertion of essential union with God served to undermine the notion of monotheism and collapsed the supernatural into the natural. Thus the Reformed tradition could view the enthusiast effort to achieve intimacy between Creator and creature as a profound failure that resulted in the naturalization of God.

Edwards’s doctrine of special grace aimed to reject both alternatives and provide a Reformed, if innovative, approach to the Creator-creature distinction. Just months before Brainerd’s conversion, Edwards presented his doctrine of special grace as “a communication or a participation of God’s fullness or of his own good.”8 The central gift of grace is the divine fullness, and Edwards uses this category to navigate his polemical Scylla and Charybdis. The one who has this grace has “something above created nature. . . . [It is] something of God. . . . The creature that has true grace and holiness in his heart has something infinitely above himself in him.”9 Divine grace is profoundly (infinitely!) discontinuous with created nature. This is aimed to undermine Arminian optimism about nature. It is intended to persuade people like David Brainerd that their natural efforts will never bring about supernatural ends.10 Yet does this avoid Scylla only to fall into Charybdis? What of the danger of radical enthusiasm? Once again, Edwards’s category of divine fullness charts his course. Divine grace “is not a communication of God’s essence, but it is a communication of that which the Scripture calls God’s fullness.”11 Here Edwards steers clear of essential union. When Brainerd or anyone else receives true grace, they gain something that is entirely foreign to their nature, something of God, and yet at the same time not the divine essence.

The present study is an exploration of this doctrine of grace. More specifically, it is an exploration of Edwards’s doctrine of grace as a communication and participation in the divine fullness, with particular focus on the Creator-creature distinction and relation, and in contribution to contemporary scholarly discussions around soteriological participation theology. Edwards scholars regularly note the strong themes of divine participation within his thought, and it is increasingly common for Edwards scholars to use the term theosis to describe these ideas. These themes of divine participation, or theosis or deification or divinization, are sometimes presented as creating a tension with Edwards’s Reformed heritage. Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott begin their chapter exploring these themes in Edwards by stating, “Scholars have long recognized that certain elements in Edwards’s theology were in tension with traditional Calvinism.” McClymond and McDermott then note at least apparent affinities between Edwards’s participation thought and that of Eastern Orthodoxy.12 The implication is that Edwards’s participation thought is eccentric to his Reformed heritage.

This may reflect a larger hesitancy among some in the Reformed tradition to the whole notion of soteriological participation, and especially the category of theosis or deification.13 Other voices have critiqued the Reformation tradition for not embracing a form of soteriological participation, and some within the Reformed tradition have argued that it finds a more comfortable home within a Reformed, monergistic framework than it does elsewhere.14 All of this creates a context for this present study and this particular chapter. Within the wider debates concerning the Reformed tradition and soteriological participation, there are the underlying questions: To what extent may the Reformed tradition embrace soteriological participation? One may target the question more pointedly at Jonathan Edwards: To what extent is Edwards’s doctrine of grace as a participation in divine fullness a departure or a development of his Reformed heritage? If his doctrine of grace is a sympathetic development of the Reformed heritage, then what resources may it provide contemporary constructive efforts toward a Reformed doctrine of soteriological participation? I will take up this last question in chapters two and three. But before I suggest ways that Edwards’s doctrine of grace may provide resources for Reformed constructive work in soteriological participation, I must answer the prior questions.

This present chapter has two primary aims. First, this chapter will provide an overview of Edwards’s doctrine of grace as participation in divine fullness, with particular focus on how Edwards navigated the Creator-creature distinction. Second, this chapter will argue that this is a sympathetic development of his Reformed heritage. I will argue this on the basis that his doctrine of grace was aimed to protect Reformed orthodoxy against Arminianism on the one hand and radical enthusiasm on the other. It was not aimed at denying or repudiating Reformed interests.

I now turn to the primary focus of this first chapter: an overview of Edwards’s doctrine of grace as participation in divine fullness and its polemical use in a defense against Arminianism and radical enthusiasm. I will explore the doctrine and its polemical use by expositing a sermon titled “True Grace Is Divine.” This will provide the basic vocabulary and grammar of Edwards’s doctrine of special grace. I will then clarify its central categories by reference to his wider corpus. With this in place I will show the polemical purpose this doctrine served, which will suggest that Edwards’s doctrine of grace and participation was a servant of Reformed interests, not an opponent.

EXPOSITION OF “TRUE GRACE IS DIVINE”

Why begin with this sermon? Edwards published and wrote about his view of grace in many works and many sermons, and often at greater length and detail than this one sermon provides. There are four reasons for investigating this sermon at the outset. First, “True Grace Is Divine” provides a concise statement of Edwards’s doctrine of grace as participation in divinity, and more specifically divine fullness. Edwards speaks of participation in divine fullness in many contexts, but that voluminous body of work makes distilling a systematic and concise statement difficult. In this one sermon Edwards provides a summary of his view, which can then provide a systematic lens for grasping how the doctrine of grace functions throughout the rest of his writings. Second, in this sermon Edwards outlines a view of the category of divine fullness that contrasts it from both created nature and the divine essence. That is, he addresses the Creator-creature distinction in a targeted manner, and in a way that relates divine fullness to both created nature and the divine essence within the same argument. Edwards makes a similar contrast in other works, but here it is his particular focus. Given that it is also a particular interest of the present study, it seems a legitimate starting point. Third, the sermon shows the polemical edge of his approach to grace and participation. Last, Edwards’s sermons and notes toward the end of his life indicate that his view expressed in this sermon remained constant through the rest of his life.15

Jonathan Edwards preached “True Grace Is Divine” in December 1738: a year of great preaching and growing notoriety. It had been four years since God’s “surprising work” broke into the town of Northampton, and Edwards’s account of the revival had been published in London one year before. Yet in spite of his growing fame, his congregation’s spiritual life languished. The revival had ended abruptly and spectacularly with the suicide of Joseph Hawley Sr. in June 1735, and Edwards had become embroiled in a bitter ecclesiastical dispute regarding the alleged Arminianism of a loca...