Amid a scholarly rediscovery of Protestant forms of theosis, questions of whether Jonathan Edwards developed a theotic account of redemption have received increased attention.Footnote 1 Ironically, however, interest in Edwards's doctrine of theosis has emphasized the philosophical rather than the theological bases in ways that seem to set him outside the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy. Yet if we shift our attention away from the neo-Platonic explanations of Edwardsian theosis and place it instead where Edwards himself focused—on the communicable nature of the triune God within the economy—we see that his notions of theosis rest on firmly Protestant foundations and result in recognizably Reformed conclusions. But to say that attention to Edwards's trinitarian and incarnational theology reveals an orthodox form of theosis is not to say that his theotic soteriology lacked distinctive and even innovative elements. Unlike other theologians whose accounts of theosis bifurcated God's communicable nature from the creatures’ relational participation among the divine persons, Edwards's theology made room for and insisted on both.Footnote 2
Before we can properly assess the claim that Edwards developed a theotic soteriology that was robust, Reformed, and distinctive, we must confront the definitional challenges associated with those categories. First, in the literature there is a broad consensus that deification, divinization, and theosis are all synonyms, at least in their Christian form.Footnote 3 Here, we use theosis as representing Christian deification in all its varied depictions. Second, there is a broad consensus that there are types of theosis, and that each tradition (and even each theologian) will employ unique emphases.Footnote 4 The core that unites these distinct traditions of theosis is an understanding of God's communicable life—that what is Christ's by nature is made available to his people by grace.Footnote 5 What is not stated clearly in this definition, but what has always been assumed by orthodox doctrine, is that the divine essence is incommunicable. Therefore, what is Christ's by nature that is offered in grace is not the divine essence, but the communicable divine nature. This distinction has been developed in a variety of ways, with Eastern Orthodox theologians employing the essence-energies distinction and others, like Calvin, taking the biblical language from 2 Peter 1:4 at face value, understanding the “divine nature” in such a way that it is communicable to believers (but only as it is distinguished from the divine essence). Edwards, as we will highlight below, broadly follows the latter development. Furthermore, it should be noted that a doctrine of theosis speaks to the broadest features of soteriology, and is not, therefore, a certain construction of justification, sanctification, or glorification.Footnote 6 A doctrine of theosis will entail various conditions (e.g., an account of union, communion and/or participation), and will also act as a foundational doctrine ordering (at least) soteriology in its entirety. Importantly, Rowan Williams highlights that the tradition spawned two strands of theosis, with certain writers emphasizing the communication of divine attributes and others focusing on a participation in the relationship among the divine persons.Footnote 7 While there is much more that could be said about these two strands, for our purposes this delineation serves as a helpful framework within which to place Edwards's own discussion.Footnote 8
In what follows, we put to work Edwards's major dogmatic material to outline his doctrine of theosis. This approach differs from a more philosophical emphasis on Edwards and his relation to Neo-Platonism.Footnote 9 Michael McClymond has helpfully navigated this material, focusing on specific areas of overlap between Edwards and Eastern Orthodox developments through Gregory Palamas.Footnote 10 In doing so, he highlights texts on participation and communion, and leans heavily on the language of light, the immediate presence of God, and the divine nature.Footnote 11 A comparison with Eastern Orthodoxy is both interesting and important, but it is not the focus of our concerns here. Our task is to ground Edwards's account within his theological reflection. This will not, in any substantial way, undermine the overall position McClymond ascribes to Edwards, but it will bolster his claims through a thoroughly doctrinal reading of theosis in Edwards's thought. Broadly, we are seeking to answer the question: How does Edwards's theology give birth to an account of theosis, and what are the distinctively Reformed features of it?Footnote 12
McClymond's focus and ours intersects at an inquiry concerning what a Reformed account of theosis might look like. McClymond suggests that, “Edwards sometimes speaks in a way that seems to be at odds with traditional Calvinism,” and then he maintains that there are features of Edwards's thought that exhibit a “Catholic concern.”Footnote 13 Because of this concern, McClymond posits Edwards as a bridging figure who can be utilized for ecumenical dialogue.Footnote 14 Importantly, even though McClymond raises the question of whether Edwards's view is Reformed, he also claims that Edwards's doctrine indicates that “the two traditions [Reformed and Eastern Orthodox] may not be as far apart in their understanding of salvation as is commonly assumed.”Footnote 15 Furthermore, he avers that Edwards's view may represent a strand of Reformed theology (from Calvin to Edwards and [perhaps] Barth) that “shares the Orthodox conception of Father, Son and Spirit as abundant in goodness and overflowing toward creatures in divinizing grace.”Footnote 16 McClymond seems to be suggesting that the Reformed tradition has resources for a doctrine of theosis, but that “traditional Calvinism” has not picked up on these resources. While this raises questions far beyond the confines of this article (e.g., the nature of “Calvinism,” the question of Calvin's relationship to “the Calvinists,” and what suffices for necessary and sufficient conditions demarcating the Reformed and the Eastern Orthodox), it highlights the need to raise questions concerning what this strand of Reformed thought might entail. In anticipation of these questions, we conclude this article by showing how a doctrine of theosis can be uniquely Reformed based upon Edwards's development.
This essay progresses in three movements. First, the main development of this essay will address Edwards's doctrine of theosis with particular emphasis on his understanding of the Trinity, Christology, and soteriology. To focus these doctrines on theosis we highlight two key features of his thought: personhood through participation and the communicable aspect of the divine nature. Second, we show how Edwards's unique development allows him to bridge the two strands of the theosis tradition noted above. Here, we argue that Edwards understands the communicable divine nature within the economic activity of Son and Spirit such that a participation in the persons is synonymous with a participation in the divine nature. Last, we address whether or not Edwards departs from the Reformed tradition in his development. To do so, we assess a critique in the literature concerning the possibility of a Reformed account of theosis (focusing on the thought of John Calvin), and argue that it fails to adequately address both Edwards's position and the specific inclination of Reformed accounts.
Trinity: Personhood through Participation
Edwards's doctrine of God is widely misunderstood.Footnote 17 While it is beyond the scope of this article to address the major issues that have left so many perplexed, it is, nonetheless, important to focus attention on the broad contours of Edwards's account with a specific emphasis on theosis. In doing so, we highlight two key features of Edwards's doctrine of God that help to locate and orient creaturely deification: first, Edwards's understanding of personhood through his use of perichoresis; and, second, Edwards's development of the nature of the triune persons.
Edwards advances his account of God's life ad intra through the use of a psychological analogy. Edwards categorically states, “A person [divine or human] is that which hath understanding and will.”Footnote 18 Furthermore, Edwards asserts, “If the three in the Godhead are persons, they doubtless each of ’em have understanding.”Footnote 19 These two quotes help to outline the dilemma Edwards confronts when he develops his account of the Trinity and the path he chooses to navigate the unity and tri-personhood of God. On the one hand, Edwards is clear that the three persons are not three distinct centers of will and consciousness. On the other hand, Edwards states that the Son actually is God's understanding and the Spirit is God's will or love. Edwards employs the psychological analogy in his account of God, such that God the Father generates the Son eternally as the Father's self-understanding. Furthermore, as the Father and the Son gaze upon one another, so love (the Spirit) flows between them in the infinite pure act of God's love. As Edwards explains:
the Father understands because the Son, who is the divine understanding, is in him. The Father loves because the Holy Ghost is in him. So the Son loves because the Holy Spirit is in him and proceeds from him. So the Holy Ghost, or the divine essence subsisting in divine love, understands because the Son, the divine idea, is in him. Understanding may be predicated of this love, because it is the love of the understanding both objectively and subjectively.Footnote 20
Taking it as axiomatic that God has one understanding and one will among the three divine persons, Edwards invokes perichoresis to navigate God's oneness and threeness without erring on either side. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are persons only through their mutual interpenetration, such that God's unity and multiplicity are connected. In other words, rather than simply ground personhood in the subsistences, Edwards also employs perichoresis.Footnote 21 In his words,
Nor is it to be looked upon as a strange and unreasonable figment that the person should be said to have an understanding or love by another person's being in ’em: for we have Scripture ground to conclude so concerning the Father's having wisdom and understanding or reason, that it is by the Son's being in him; because we are there informed that he is the wisdom and reason and truth of God. And hereby God is wise by his own wisdom being in him.Footnote 22
Personhood in the Godhead, therefore, has a twofold foundation. First, it is grounded on the divine subsistences. Second, it is established through perichoresis. In doing so, Edwards binds together the processions of Son and Spirit to the divine nature and attributes. As hinted above, the Son and the Spirit both have natures intrinsic to their identity (understanding and will, respectively), established through the use of the psychological analogy. However, they are only persons as they exist in perichoretic unity (because persons, to be persons, must have understanding and will).Footnote 23 In the economy, God sends forth his self-understanding to reveal himself to creatures and sends his self-love to abide in the elect.Footnote 24 The nature of each subsistence is carried over in their person, so that, in the economy, the Son carries with him God's self-understanding so that he can truly say, in John 14, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”Footnote 25 The Son actually is God's own self-understanding, image, and “face,” and therefore he is particularly fit to reveal the Father (what Stephen Holmes calls a “radical extension of the doctrine of appropriation”).Footnote 26 This lays the groundwork for Edwards's soteriology, which, as we will show below, is based on human participation in God's own self-understanding and self-love. By advancing his peculiar account of perichoresis and grounding aspects of the divine nature in the persons of Son and Spirit, Edwards orders soteriology around participation in the divine nature (which is synonymous with participation in the divine persons). Importantly, a robust and orthodox account of theosis will describe this participation and, at the same time, protect against participation in the divine essence (which is seen as radical divinization).Footnote 27 Edwards's distinction between the divine essence and the divine nature, and his appropriation of the divine nature to the economic activities of Son and Spirit, gives him the theological framework to advance a doctrine of theosis without succumbing to the errors of radical divinization.
To grasp Edwards's distinction between the divine essence and nature, it is necessary to analyze a letter he wrote responding to criticism that he posits a radical notion of divinization (one in which the creature participates in the essence of God). Central to Edwards's response is the distinction between the divine essence and nature. The nature of the divine persons is communicable to the creature, whereas the essence is not. He states,
I think holiness may, without absurdity, be said to be the proper nature of the Holy Spirit on two accounts: (I) As ’tis his peculiar beauty and glory and so may in a special manner be called his nature, as brightness may in a peculiar manner be said to be the nature of the sun, and [as] that which is in a peculiar manner the nature of honey is its sweetness. (2) ’Tis the proper character of the Spirit above all other things, in that office and work of his wherein we are concerned with him. This is that in his nature which he especially manifests and exercises in his office, acts, and operations towards us; and therefore this in his nature is singled out from all other things to denote him by, as he is revealed [to] us; so his name by which he is called in Scripture is the Holy Ghost. And this is that in his nature which he communicates something of to the saints, and therefore is called by divines in general a communicable attribute; and the saints are made partakers of his holiness, as the Scripture expressly declares (Heb. 12:10), and that without imparting to them his essence.Footnote 28
In receiving holiness, beauty, and glory, the saints are partaking in the specific nature of the Spirit in the inner-life of God that is communicable in God's economic activity. Along similar lines, Edwards addresses the name of the Spirit as both “Holy” and “Spirit.” He notes that “spirit” is not used metaphysically but refers to disposition, inclination, or temper.Footnote 29 He quotes Num 14:24, where Caleb is said to be of “another spirit,” to highlight his point. Therefore, the “Holy” Spirit is the disposition of holiness inherent in the Godhead. As noted above, Edwards refers to this disposition or inclination as the Spirit's proper nature. Edwards, with many Patristic writers, utilizes the image of the sun to show how God can communicate his natureFootnote 30 (or, following Palamas, his “energies”) without communicating his essence.Footnote 31 The natures of the persons are communicable as their natures, and, as I highlight below, as the elect receive the Son and Spirit in redemption, they participate in these natures as well.Footnote 32 In redeeming humankind, God gives himself to the believer so that they can participate in his own self-understanding and self-love.
Incarnation: Unity in the Spirit
Traditionally, the incarnation has provided the necessary dogmatic architecture to construct an account of deification.Footnote 33 In a broadly similar sense, Edwards's doctrine of the incarnation offers the theological blueprint upon which he builds his account of theosis.Footnote 34 Prior to expositing Edwards's view of the incarnation specifically, it is fruitful to sketch an overview of its purpose. There are several instances in Edwards's thought that highlight this broad movement, but few are as explicit as the following two examples. First, in his sermon on Canticles 1:3, he claims, “We shall in a sort be partakers of his [Christ's] relation to the Father or his communion with him in his Sonship. We shall not only be the sons of God by regeneration but a kind of participation of the Sonship of the eternal Son.”Footnote 35 Secondly, and along similar lines, Edwards states,
This was the design of Christ, to bring it to pass, that he, and his Father, and his people, might all be united in one. . . that those that the Father has given him, should be brought into the household of God; that he, and his Father, and his people, should be as it were one society, one family; that the church should be as it were admitted into the society of the blessed Trinity.Footnote 36
In these two instances we see the broad picture of Edwards's doctrine of theosis. Saints are children of God not merely by regeneration, but by a true participation in the Sonship of the Son. We will see this more clearly in Edwards's soteriology, but for now it helps to orient our discussion of the incarnation. Turning to Edwards's account of the incarnation specifically, it is important to attend to this doctrine within the telos noted above. How do believers, in other words, come to partake in God's own life?
Edwards's Spirit-Christology
Edwards, following John Owen, held to a Spirit-Christology such that the Holy Spirit was the bond of union between the divine and human natures of Christ.Footnote 37 In an early and (slightly) convoluted Miscellanies entry, Edwards states,
The man Christ is united to the Logos these two ways: first, by the respect which God hath to this human nature. God hath respect to this man and loveth him as his own Son; this man hath communion with the Logos, in the love which the Father hath to him as his only begotten Son. Now the love of God is the Holy Ghost. And secondly, by what is inherent in this man, whereby he becomes one person; which is only by the communion of understanding and communion of will, inclination, spirit or temper.Footnote 38
First, Edwards notes that God the Father respects the man Jesus as his only begotten Son. Further, the man Jesus has communion with the Logos within the very love of God, which is the Holy Spirit. Just as God the Father and God the Son are bound together in the inner-life of God by the Spirit of love, so too the man Jesus knows this communion through the Spirit. Edwards explains that, “He [Christ] has the same spirit or disposition towards the Father; not as believers have a filial spirit . . . but he has the Spirit of the only begotten of the Father.”Footnote 39 The Logos and Christ share in a specific relation to the Father, a relation known in the Holy Spirit of God, and a relation which is sui generis and personal. Second, Jesus Christ somehow has a communion of understanding, will, and disposition with the Logos.Footnote 40 Edwards claims that, “The man Jesus becomes one person by a communion of knowledge and will,” and also, “’tis by the Spirit that divine knowledge and consciousness is given to the man Jesus.”Footnote 41 The Spirit serves to unite the two natures in one person. In taking this line, Edwards realizes that he is open to some obvious criticism. If the Spirit is the agent that takes on the flesh of humanity to unite it to the Godhead (and Logos specifically), why is the Son incarnate and not the Spirit?Footnote 42 Edwards responds,
this objection is without substance, for the union we speak of is not an union of contact or influence, but a personal union. Christ may be by the indwelling and influence of the Holy Ghost personally united to the Son of God, and yet not be personally united to the Holy Ghost, through whose indwelling and influence it is.Footnote 43
The Spirit personally unites the Logos and the human nature of Christ in one person, and yet it is not the person of the Spirit, but the Son who is incarnate. Therefore, utilizing this line of logic, Edwards can baldly state, “In Jesus who dwelt here upon earth, there was immediately only these two things: there was flesh, or the human nature; and there was the Spirit of holiness, or the eternal Spirit, by which he was united to the Logos.”Footnote 44 What we see in the immanent life of God we see in the economic: the Spirit of God is the binding love between the Father and his Son. This union, as a personal union by the Spirit, is sui generis. On the other hand, as an economic act of the Spirit it has an analogous parallel in creaturely redemption. The redemption of the elect follows the pattern found in the incarnation of the Son. In an early Miscellanies entry, Edwards states, “There is a likeness in the manner of God's dwelling in the man Christ, and in believers.”Footnote 45 Robert Caldwell provides a summary of Edwards's development of these parallel unions in his book-length analysis of Edwards's pneumatology:
The relative union whereby human beings harmonize in community, the mystical union believers have with Christ, the essential union that is enjoyed by the members of the Trinity, and hypostatic union of Christ's two natures all share one common denominator: the Holy Spirit's immediate and personal activity as the bond of union among distinct persons.Footnote 46
Incarnation: Ordering Theosis
The Son of God “takes on flesh” and dwells among creatures through the action of the Spirit. The redemptive parallel to this action is Christ sending his Spirit to unite with human persons for participation in his Sonship before the Father. Edwards ties the incarnation and the work of theosis together when he states, “inasmuch as he was a divine person, he brought down divinity with him to us. So he brought God down to man, and then he ascended to God. Inasmuch as he was in the human nature, he carried up humanity with him to God.”Footnote 47 Later, Edwards builds on this descending and ascending motif but draws out the parallels more fully: “he came into this world and brought God or divinity down with him to us; and then he ascended to God and carried up humanity or man with him to God. And from heaven he sent down the Holy Spirit, whereby he gives God to man, and hereby he draws them to give up themselves to God.”Footnote 48 Edwards recognizes a parallel movement in the incarnation and the sending of the Spirit. Furthermore, there is another parallel between the ascension of Christ to the Father and the saints’ ascension to God in Christ. Therefore, to trace this parallel, just as the Son knows the Father in communion and love, so glorified believers come to ascend within that very relationship: “The saints shall enjoy God as partaking with Christ of his enjoyment of God.”Footnote 49 The saints’ access to God is through the person of Christ alone: “They being in Christ shall partake of the love God the Father [has] to Christ, and as the Son knows the Father so they shall partake with him in his sight of God, as being as it were parts of him as he is in the bosom of the Father.”Footnote 50 Furthermore, as we will see more fully below, this provides a specific teleology for Edwards's soteriology. He claims,
As the new nature is from God, so it tends to God as its center; and as that which tends to its center is not quiet and at rest, till it has got quite to the very center, so the new nature that is in the saints never will it be at rest, till there is a perfect union with God and conformity to him, and so no separation, or alienation, or enmity remaining. The holy nature in the saints tends to the fountain whence it proceeds, and never will be at rest, till the soul is fully brought to that fountain, and all swallowed up in it.Footnote 51
The centripetal force of God's love will draw the saints into a full union with himself, a union that will increase eternally. God's own life is an infinite fountain of knowledge and love, what Edwards refers to as the “communicative” nature of God's eternal life. It is the receiving of this knowledge and love—as a participation in the very nature of God's life—that awaits the saints in glory. Human persons partake of the life of God, and are therefore fully actualized in the overflow of God's love and knowledge. Far from being static, eternity is inherently dynamic—an interplay of persons uniting in love, knowledge, and participation in one another.Footnote 52 This eternal union and conformity to God is, quite simply, the necessary direction of theotic soteriologies.Footnote 53 In different but equally bold terminology, Edwards states,
Thus they shall eat and drink abundantly, and swim in the ocean of love, and be eternally swallowed up in the infinitely bright, and infinitely mild and sweet beams of divine love; eternally receiving that light, eternally full of it, and eternally compassed round with it, and everlastingly reflecting it back again to the fountain of it.Footnote 54
In this sense, in regeneration, the Spirit's infusion renews the image of God, so that “man is raised to the heavenly life, so that he is enabled to live to God and to perform those actions that are for God's glory and for his own true happiness.”Footnote 55 The regenerate are now partaking in this fountain of life, so that the soul becomes like God: “But the soul of a saint receives light from the Sun of Righteousness, in such a manner, that its nature is changed, and it becomes properly a luminous thing: not only does the sun shine in the saints, but they also become little suns, partaking of the nature of the fountain of their light.”Footnote 56 In eternity, what was given in part in regeneration is known robustly in glorification: “the soul which only had a little spark of divine love in it in this world shall be, as it were, wholly turned into love; and be like the sun, not having a spot in it, but being wholly a bright, ardent flame.”Footnote 57 In this sense Edwards notes that as God's life is pure act, by analogy, glorified creatures are now perpetually active: “They [the saints] shall perpetually behold God's glory and perpetually enjoy his love. But they shall not remain in a state of inactivity, merely receiving from God; but they return to him and shall enjoy him in a way of serving and glorifying him.”Footnote 58 Religious affections mark out the believer's life after regeneration, and religious affections entail a true participation in God's self-understanding and self-love given over in Son and Spirit. God's life is utterly captivating to the believer who now has eyes to see and ears to hear.
The Christian life, for Edwards, is a life of religious affection. Religious affection highlights how God pours forth as an infinite fountain and how creatures receive and flow back to God according to their finite capacities. God's own attributes of understanding and love—personal attributes of Son and Spirit—are known, and participated in, through the dark glass of faith here and now, but in eternity the saints share in the pouring forth and pouring back of the Spirit of love that is God's eternal existence:
All shall stand about the God of glory, the fountain of love, as it were opening their bosoms to be filled with those effusions of love which are poured forth from thence, as the flowers on the earth in a pleasant spring day open their bosoms to the sun to be filled with his warmth and light, and to flourish in beauty and fragrancy by his rays. Every saint is as a flower in the garden of God, and holy love is the fragrancy and sweet odor which they all send forth, and with which they fill that paradise. Every saint there is as a note in a concert of music which sweetly harmonizes with every other note, and all together employed wholly in praising God and the Lamb; and so all helping one another to their utmost to express their love of the whole society to the glorious Father and Head of it, and [to pour back] love into the fountain of love, whence they are supplied and filled with love and with glory.Footnote 59
In receiving the communicative overflow of God's life, believers are partaking in the divine nature carried over in the Son and the Spirit, and as such, are partaking in God's life. Therefore, Edwards says, in his most explicit use of deification language, “the saints are exalted to glorious dignity, even to union and fellowship with God him[self], to be in some respects divine in glory and happiness.”Footnote 60 Glory and happiness are terms that describe God's communicable life, and the saints can be considered divine in this way (with the important qualifier of “in some respects”). He expands this qualification by noting, “yet care is taken that it should not be in themselves, but in a person that is God; and they must be as it were emptied of themselves in order to it.”Footnote 61 God is all, and as the creature is emptied of himself or herself, they are filled in the ocean of God (without ever losing their individual, personal identity). The picture of life Edwards develops, therefore, is one where the creature finds all goodness, beauty and love within God, and not themselves. Edwards states, “The design of God in thus ordering things is to teach and show that he is all, and the creature nothing.”Footnote 62 This “nothing” means that the creature has no goodness in autonomy, but as a creature made in the image of God, human persons are capable of partaking in the fullness that is God's life (i.e., theosis). In fact, it is through this participation in the life of God that the creature is fully actualized.Footnote 63
Soteriology: Salvation through Pneumatological-Participation
We have already mentioned what might be called the meta-narrative of Edwards's soteriology—that believers come to partake in the Son's relationship to the Father.Footnote 64 Likewise, we have highlighted Edwards's Spirit-Christology and shown how the Spirit's work to unite the human nature of Christ to the life of God is the archetype upon which the ectype of redemption is etched. The pneumatological structure of Edwards's Christology orients his doctrine of theosis, and central to this account is the connection between the persons of God in the economy and the attributes they communicate to the creature. Furthermore, since the Spirit's nature is holiness, love, beauty, and grace, receiving the Spirit is receiving God's own holiness, love, beauty, and grace, and is, therefore, a communion in the life of God.Footnote 65
In the remaining space of this section, we provide a narrative of redemption with an eye on theosis as a structural schema. First, as noted above, the focal point of God's economic activity is the Son and Spirit offering union and communion with God, and the centerpiece of this redemption is Christ's death on the cross. While Edwards's doctrine of atonement is hard to reconstruct, one aspect is clear: Christ's life and ministry purchases the Spirit for believers.Footnote 66 Importantly, as I have emphasized, to have the Spirit is to have God's own love and will such that believers truly partake of God. Furthermore, as love, the Spirit unites. Just as the Spirit unites the two natures of Christ in the love of the Father (the Father loving Christ as Son), so too the Spirit (given over by the Son), unites believers to God. The elect are united to God in Christ as a bride is united to her groom in marriage—they are truly one flesh (and even one spirit, 1 Cor 6:17). The giving over of the Spirit is parallel to God sending the Spirit to unite a human nature to the Logos. Just as Christ's human nature was sanctified in the incarnation, so too by being united to the incarnate One are the elect made new.Footnote 67
The sending of the Spirit brings about regeneration, justification, sanctification, and ultimately glorification. In regeneration, “habits of true virtue and holiness” are obtained and believers “come to have the character of true Christians.”Footnote 68 The “habit” and “character” is nothing less than the habit and character of God's own life—the “Holy” Spirit—or holiness itself dwelling in them.Footnote 69 Christ loves the elect to such a degree, that his act of loving unites them to his own life of holiness. This parallels the Father sending the Spirit of love to incarnate the Logos as the man Jesus, who is only truly the Son of the Father because the Father sees him as such. Upon his ascension Jesus sends the Spirit to unite believers to himself, so that the Father looks upon believers as one with Christ, and therefore truly his own children. The Spirit's vivifying activity turns the believer to Christ so that the believer receives him. This act of receiving, on the believer's part, is faith. Therefore faith is based upon the real work of the Spirit in the life of a believer, and yet righteousness remains alien because only Christ is truly righteous.Footnote 70
In explaining his account of justification, Edwards asserts that “God neither will nor can justify a person without a righteousness. . . if a person should be justified without a righteousness, the judgment would not be according to truth,” claiming that “the sentence of justification would be a false sentence, unless there be a righteousness performed that is by the judge properly looked upon as his.”Footnote 71 Justification is, according to Edwards's account, truly legal, and therefore necessitates a right pronouncement by a judge. For the judge to be honorable and righteous, the believer must be actually righteous to be declared so. It is in this vein that Edwards states, “what is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal; that is, it is something really in them, and between them, uniting them, that is the ground of the suitableness of their being accounted as one by the Judge.”Footnote 72 Christ, as the fulfiller of the law, is the only person justified before God on his own account. The elect are not justified separate from Christ's justification, but instead, are justified as they are one with Christ who is justified in himself.Footnote 73 Edwards claims that in Christ's “justification all who believe in him, and whose surety he is, are virtually justified.”Footnote 74 God the Judge justifies Christ by raising him from the dead, and, Edwards continues to emphasize, “the justification of a believer is not other than his being admitted to communion in, or participation of the justification of this head and surety of all believers.”Footnote 75
In the incarnation God opens his life through his Son, and at Pentecost God sends his love to unite believers to his own life. In Christ the Father is known, and by the Spirit, Christ is illumined. Edwards's account of justification posits a participation in the life of the faithful One so that his faithfulness is counted for the elect. In Edwards's understanding, this is not suspect book-keeping on God's part, nor is it a “legal fiction,” but it is grounded on the reality that the elect are truly one with the Son through communion with his Spirit. Therefore, Edwards can state, “it is in our partaking of the same Holy Spirit that our communion with God consists. . . . In partaking with the Father and the Son of the Holy Ghost, we possess and enjoy the love and grace of the Father and the Son: for the Holy Ghost is that love and grace.”Footnote 76 To partake in the life of God is not simply to enter a life extrinsic to oneself, but to receive and embrace that life internally. To explain this reality, Edwards turns to an infusion of the Holy Spirit that creates communion with God through regeneration. This is a physical act.Footnote 77 The Spirit renews and sanctifies, such that, “those things are wrought in the soul that are above nature and they are caused to exist in the soul habitually, and according to such a stated constitution of law, that lays such a foundation for exercises in a continued course, as is called a principle of nature.”Footnote 78 The work of the Spirit on the regenerate is to unite himself to them and exert “his own nature in the exercise of their faculties.”Footnote 79 Only God is holy, and therefore the “Holy” Spirit communicates his own nature of holiness to the creature directly. Note that Edwards does not back away from language and texts utilized in traditional accounts of theosis:
There is no work so high and excellent; for there is no work wherein God does so much communicate himself, and wherein the mere creature hath, in so high a sense, a participation of God; so that it is expressed in Scripture by the saints being made “partakers of the divine nature” (II Pet. 1:4), and having God dwelling in them, and they in God (I John 4:12, 15–16, and ch. 3:21), and having Christ in them (John 17:21; Rom. 8:10), being the temples of the living God (II Cor. 6:16), living by Christ's life (Gal. 2:20), being make partakers of God's holiness (Heb. 12:10), having Christ's love dwelling in them (John 17:26), having his joy fulfilled in them (John 17:13), seeing light in God's light, and being made to drink of the river of God's pleasures (Ps. 36:8-9), having fellowship with God, or communicating and partaking with him (as the word signifies) (I John 1:3). Not that we are made partakers of the essence of God, and so are “Godded” with God, and ‘Christed’ with Christ, according to the abominable and blasphemous language and notions of some heretics; but, to use the Scripture phrase, they are made partakers of God's fullness (Eph. 3:17–19; John 1:16), that is, of God's beauty and happiness. . . for so it is evident the word “fullness” signifies in Scripture language.Footnote 80
The believer is given holiness as the Holy Spirit of God to indwell her being. This indwelling does not remain external, but is infused.Footnote 81 Believers are caught up in the economic work of Son and Spirit drawing them into God's own life—to be “partakers of the divine nature” and to be “brought into the household of God” as we have already seen. This is a “participation of God,” Edwards notes, and while this is not a participation in God's essence (partaking in God's life in the same manner that he does), Edwards argues forcefully that this is a true participation in God himself.
The focus of Edwards's soteriology is undeniably the Son and the Spirit. The Spirit-filled Son is the justified One, and the Spirit-overflowing Son sends his Spirit to unite the elect to his own life. Through the Son, believers are united to God's life, and in glorification they come to see according to their finite capacity.Footnote 82 Sanctification, therefore, is the work of the Spirit in the hearts of the saints to mortify the flesh and vivify their spirits. Just like justification, sanctification is a participation in the Son—a participation in his holiness. This participation is the engine of mortification and vivification and continues the work of transformation begun in regeneration. Edwards's soteriology does not rotate around a singular locus (e.g., justification), but finds its orbit in the person and work of Christ and the person and work of the Spirit. Theosis is not simply a category of glorification (or union, justification, sanctification, etc.), but is the structural category of soteriology as such. Theosis, and its grammar of participation, forms Edwards's soteriology and orients it to its ultimate goal—an increasing union, communion, and participation with God in Christ for eternity. This theocentric vision follows along the same contours and concerns as the Fathers and Eastern Orthodox, and therefore it is not surprising that Edwards's soteriology as a whole follows with similar emphases.Footnote 83
Uniting the Strands of Theosis
Edwards's account of the Trinity offers a way to talk about personhood through participation and God's communicable nature without succumbing to some form of radical divinization where creatures partake in God's essence. This is an interesting point in light of Rowan William's assertion, noted above, that what divides the two strands of theosis in the tradition is the differing accounts of participation and communion. According to one strand, theosis is primarily a communication of the divine attributes, whereas on the other, theosis is a participation in the relationship of the divine persons. In Edwards's account it is impossible to pull these two notions apart. The Son and the Spirit, as persons, are also attributes (i.e., “natures”) that are communicated in the economy to the elect. To partake in the divine attributes simply is to partake in the relationship of the divine persons.Footnote 84 Edwards unites these two within the immanent life of God and refuses to separate them in the economy. Furthermore, by utilizing the term “nature” in this way, Edwards can refer to the classic text on theosis, 2 Peter 1:4, where Peter claims that believers can be partakers of the divine nature, without having to employ an extra-biblical term like “energies” as with Eastern Orthodox accounts. For Edwards, there is no “energy” or attribute communicable from God to the creature outside of the economic movement of Son and Spirit. God's self-giving is exactly that, giving over himself in the Son and the Spirit; there cannot be, on his view, another way of partaking in God's life than in the Son by the Spirit.Footnote 85 In this sense, we can say that Edwards did not simply unite the two strands of the theosis tradition, but that he constructed a unique account of the relational emphasis and developed it in such a way as to interpret the communication of attributes relationally. Edwards's psychological analogy and reworking of the divine attributes around personhood serve as the foundation for such an account.
A Reformed Account?
We have seen that Edwards's exposition of theosis is able to bridge two ancient strands of thought. Furthermore, Edwards follows Calvin in his use of the “divine nature” to signify a communicable feature of God's life, but does so through his unique development of the Trinity and divine attributes. Now we can raise the question noted at the beginning of this essay: Is this account Reformed? Furthermore, and along similar lines, it is important to ask if it is even possible for a Reformed theologian to posit an intellectually viable account of theosis in light of other essential commitments.Footnote 86
While it is widely argued in the secondary literature that the Reformed did develop doctrines of theosis, there is still the question of whether this is doctrinally possible.Footnote 87 To address this question, we turn to Bruce McCormack's critique of recent expositions of Calvin's doctrine of theosis.Footnote 88 Using McCormack's engagement with Calvin studies, we can advance a potential criticism of any Reformed doctrine of theosis. This criticism can be succinctly formulated as follows: A Reformed doctrine of theosis is impossible because it would necessitate a rejection of the Reformed view of the communicatio idiomatum. If this criticism stands, it would serve to drive a wedge between Edwards's thought on this point in relation to his standing within the Reformed tradition.Footnote 89 We will conclude that Edwards's view is able to navigate this potential critique through his unique development of the communicable nature of God as a participation in the life of the divine persons, allowing him to affirm the Reformed position on the communicatio idiomatum as well as posit a robust doctrine of theosis.
Communication of Attributes and a Reformed Christology
In our exposition of Edwards's Spirit-Christology, we discovered a Reformed Christology with a particular emphasis on the work of the Spirit. In his development, the divine and human natures were both upheld in the Spirit, and both communicated their natures to the person within the Spirit. But if this is the case, if the human nature is not ultimately deified by the divine, can real theosis take place? This is at the heart of Bruce McCormack's critique of scholars arguing for a doctrine of deification in Calvin. McCormack notes, “Calvin has retained the later orthodox idea of a ‘compound person’ and the later orthodox treatment of the communication of attributes. But he has dispensed completely with that which made divinization theories possible: the idea of an interpenetration of the natures.”Footnote 90 For McCormack, this undermines the possibility of a real participation in the divine. He continues, “And since there can be no interpenetration of the natures in Christ, participation in the human nature of Christ cannot result in a participation in the divine nature. The end result is that you simply cannot find the ontological ground needed for a divinization theory in Calvin's Christology. If there is no interpenetration of the natures, there can be no divinization.”Footnote 91
If we take McCormack's critique concerning interpretations of Calvin on theosis and apply that to Edwards, we have a way to assess, doctrinally, if it is even possible to claim that Edwards has a Reformed doctrine of theosis. There is no question that Edwards's Spirit-Christology entails a different approach than Calvin's, but it also seems clear that Edwards uses it to make the same theological claims. In other words, like Owen before him, Edwards's use of pneumatology is to secure the Reformed view that there is not a communication between the natures such that the human nature is divinized by the divine. But even this critique still leaves the issues somewhat abstract. McCormack, helpfully, focuses in on the key questions:
What is finally meant by the well-worn phrase participation in the life of God? The phrase is ambiguous on the face of it. Does it mean ‘participation in the life that is God's own, the life that is proper to him as God, that life that is his essentially?’ If so, how is it possible to participate in it without participating in the divine essence?. . . To put a finer point on it: is the ‘life of God’ in which we are said to participate uncreated life or created life?Footnote 92
These are the right questions to pose to Edwards's doctrine as well as Calvin's. This is exactly where we see Edwards's idiosyncratic understanding of the communicable natures (i.e., attributes) of God guide his thought. Furthermore, it is at this point where we can see how Edwards pulls together the two strands of the tradition into one singular account, and how this allows him to maintain a Reformed Christology without losing the ability to talk about a participation in God's uncreated life, all without allowing for the believer to somehow partake in God's essence. In response to McCormack's question concerning Calvin's theology, we bring together several threads in Edwards's view that highlights how his account of theosis is still distinctively Reformed. Central to this argument is Edwards's understanding of divine attributes and what participation in God's life entails.
For Edwards, participation in the divine life is a relational reality that entails a participation in God's attributes. As we have seen, Edwards is able to pull together the two strands of the theosis tradition by linking the creatures’ participation in the divine nature with relational participation with the divine persons. In his “Discourse on the Trinity,” Edwards says this about the divine attributes:
It is a maxim amongst divines that everything that is in God is God, which must be understood of real attributes and not of mere modalities. If a man should tell me that the immutability of God is God, or that the omnipresence of God and authority of God [is God], I should not be able to think of any rational meaning of what he said. It hardly sounds to me proper to say that God's being without change is God, or that God's being everywhere is God, or that God's having a right of government over creatures is God. But if it be meant that the real attributes of God, viz. his understanding and love, are God, then what we have said may in some measure explain how it is so: for Deity subsists in them distinctly, so they are distinct divine persons.Footnote 93
On Edwards's understanding of real attributes, what is intrinsic to God's life and nature are features of personhood. All other attributes, therefore, are extrinsic and do not constitute God's nature (even though they are still true of God).Footnote 94 Edwards names these extrinsic attributes “relational attributes,” or, as in the quote above, “modalities.” Understanding and will, which are God's attributes, are also understood to be God's nature. Within understanding and will, it is important to note, Edwards includes synonyms like wisdom and image for understanding, and love, peace, beauty, and glory for will.Footnote 95 To partake in God's nature, therefore, on Edwards's understanding, is to partake in God's self-understanding and self-willing. This is how Edwards defines religious affection. God's life is religious affection in pure act, and creatures come to partake of this life through the giving of the Son (understanding and image) and the Spirit (will and love). To have understanding without love would be mere speculative knowledge, and therefore could not be a participation in God's self-knowing (which is affectionate self-knowledge).Footnote 96 The Son and Spirit in the economy carry within themselves the features of God's life that they embody in the eternal processions of the godhead. By partaking of God's own understanding and will, believers are partakers of the divine nature. This is why Edwards can use partaking and fellowship interchangeably. To participate in the divine attributes is what it means to have fellowship with God. Footnote 97
Importantly, partaking in God's life entails the self-giving of God in Son (understanding) and Spirit (will/love), and is, therefore, partaking in the uncreated life of God. But this does not entail a participation in the divine essence. The divine essence calls out God's own participation in his life, as deity.Footnote 98 God's participation is unique as infinite, uncreated, and eternal, but the uncreated life of God is communicable to finite, created, and temporal creatures.Footnote 99 God's participation is immediate within his divine essence, and creatures can share in this life as human persons in the mediated immediacy of God's self-giving.Footnote 100 This partaking is mediated in that it is always in and through Christ, but it is immediate in that the divine life is not communicated through means external to God's life, but through a communion and participation in the Son and Spirit. For Edwards, this partaking is described as the beatific vision, which is an immediate sight of God the Father, mediated by Christ in the Holy Spirit.Footnote 101 Just as the Father gazes upon the Son (i.e., the divine understanding) in the infinite actuality of the Spirit of love, the creaturely parallel is the regenerate gazing upon Christ (i.e., the divine understanding) through the illuminating work of the Spirit of love.Footnote 102 In glory, this sight is a real participation in the uncreated life of God, but it is mediated through Christ in the Spirit.Footnote 103 In this sense, the eternal life of the saints is an eternal increase into the life of God in Christ by the Spirit. Along these lines, Edwards states, “The way in which the saints will come to an intimate full enjoyment of the Father is not by the Father's majesty. . . but by their ascending to him by their union with Christ's person.”Footnote 104 Likewise, “it seems by this to have been God's design to admit man as it were to the inmost fellowship with the deity,” and Edwards claims there is “an eternal society or family in the Godhead in the Trinity of persons.”Footnote 105
On Edwards's understanding of theosis, the question is not: How is the human “nature” divinized? but is instead, how is the human person ushered into the life of God? The saints ascend in the person of Christ, and the union and communion they share with God entails a partaking in his personal attributes of understanding and will (i.e., the divine nature). The saints share in the same beatific gazing that defines the inner-life (uncreated-life) of God. Importantly, the saints do not share in this life as God, but as human creatures, and therefore this sharing is perfect, but not comprehensive.Footnote 106 What the saints experience is a finite participation in the life of an infinite God.Footnote 107 They do not cease to be human, but they do become, in a sense, infinitely united with God as they ascend in the person of Christ (keeping in mind the important qualification, “in a sense”).Footnote 108 As already noted above, Edwards links this union of mind with Christ with the spiritual union that God knows even in his own life, saying,
What insight I have of the nature of minds, I am convinced that there is no guessing what kind of union and mixtion, by consciousness or otherwise, there may be between them. So that all difficulty is removed in believing what the Scripture declares about spiritual unions — of the persons of the Trinity, of the two natures of Christ, of Christ and the minds of saints.Footnote 109
As mind uniting with mind, Edwards's understanding of theosis functions in the register of persons rather than essence. This is not to separate the two, but to highlight that one can be united to a divine person and their nature without merging with the divine essence; creatures can become “little suns” without becoming the Sun. This follows similar contours to the Eastern Orthodox use of the essence-energies distinction, but it is now an essence-persons, or essence-nature distinction. Importantly, distinguishing essence and nature is done by Calvin himself, and, a straight-forward interpretation of 2 Peter 1:4, which claims that believers can partake in the divine nature.Footnote 110
What Edwards provides is a unique way to develop a Reformed account of theosis. The ascent of creatures within the divine life is an ascent within the person of the Son, and therefore does not entail a divinization of the human nature.Footnote 111 This may offer us the key feature of a distinctively Reformed doctrine of theosis: A Reformed doctrine of theosis works within the relational strand of the tradition.Footnote 112 McCormack's critique only works against one strand of the theosis tradition, the tradition that argues for a communication of attributes as the primary mode of divinization. Based on a Reformed Christology, the emphasis will always be upon a relational self-giving of God, that is, nonetheless, a real partaking in his life. This is exactly what Edwards does, but he goes one step further by arguing for the primacy of the relational without losing the communication of attributes. Through his unique development of the communicable divine nature, Edwards is able to maintain the Reformed emphasis while also allowing for something more. This “something more” is what McClymond and others have recognized as so unique to Edwards's view, but it does not entail a rejection of the Reformed tradition (however unique his contribution).
Conclusion
In Edwards we find every essential aspect of a real doctrine of theosis: it is grounded in trinitarian participation, modeled and made available through the incarnation, entails a real participation through the economic work of Son and Spirit, and is oriented by a teleology of union and conformity to God. We might call these features the broad contours of a doctrine of theosis. With Edwards's account, and the many variations of theosis found in the tradition, once the broad criteria are met, the question is not if this is a doctrine of theosis, but what kind?Footnote 113 In Edwards, we find a thinker who draws together the two divergent emphases in the tradition, and does so within a Reformed theological system that argues for a monergistic account of salvation.Footnote 114 According to Gannon Murphy: “A classical Reformed doctrine of theosis must also be consistent with a monergistic soteriology. It is this that distinguishes a uniquely Reformed theosis from others in which the engagement of autonomous praxis is often thought to be necessary in order to appropriate or attain theosis as a kind of reward for holy behavior.”Footnote 115 Adding to Murphy's point, we can say that the Reformed utilize a monergistic account of salvation to establish the contours of a relational notion of participation. This kind of account leans heavily on the notion that God is all in all, and focuses on creaturely participation in the communicable fullness of God's life. This is not a denial of theosis, but it is a unique contribution that thrives within a distinctively Reformed theological structure. What Edwards uniquely offers is a theological system that allows him to unite the bifurcated tradition with a relational emphasis. While Edwards's theological structure is somewhat idiosyncratic (particularly his move to ground the divine nature within the Son and Spirit as communicable features of God's life), his contribution can serve as an example of how the Reformed tradition can construct a doctrine of theosis with real ecumenical import.
