Common Participation

Our understanding of what I call common participation must begin with Edwards’s view of common grace and the way it is rooted in God’s action.

Jonathan Edwards and Deification: Reconciling Theosis and the Reformed Tradition, by James R. Salladin

Keeping in mind that Edwards’ view of participation is nuanced, involving both a common participation and a special participation, here Salladin examines what is meant by common participation.

Edwards followed his Reformed tradition regarding the distinction of two forms of grace: common grace, and special or saving grace. Common grace is extended to all creatures, while special grace is specific to those who will be saved

Edwards was very concerned to show that these two types of grace differ at a fundamental level.

It isn’t just that special grace is an extra dose of common grace; special grace is entirely different in kind from common grace. Both are an action of God, but God does fundamentally different things in each of the two. From a sermon by Edwards:

“Common grace differs from special, in that it influences only by assisting of nature, and not by imparting grace, or bestowing anything above nature. … Or, in other words, common grace only assists the faculties of the soul to do that more fully which they do by nature.”

There is nothing incongruous between common grace and nature. God acts and influences what is natural in a human person. Now, one might conclude that by this, Edwards sees a strong distinction between common grace and nature. But Edwards offers nothing like this.

…Edwards has no view of nature that is not directed or supported or influenced by God’s immediate action, and therefore has no view of nature that is not a result of common grace.

In this, there is a sense of something that I have come across before, something that rings quite true for me, and something I don’t believe I have ever read before from someone in the Reformed tradition (it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, just that I never came across it in this tradition). This will be further developed through this post.

One therefore cannot understand common grace without asking about Edward’s view of the natural world.

How does Edwards see the natural world relating to God? On other words, what is Edwards’ metaphysic?

Edwards believed that created being was an immediate and continuous gift from God. This was not a new thought, but it was unpopular at the time.

Such older ways of ontology were being jettisoned in the Enlightenment, where philosophy would develop the idea that the world just ran itself. At most, God just set the wheels in motion, then let things run. Laws and mechanisms could explain all of what humans observed. Nature was autonomous.

It wasn’t that Edwards was a dinosaur in his thinking; he engaged with the then-current philosophy. He concluded that the natural world depended radically and at every moment on God’s immediate power. (This is the idea that I have come across elsewhere, but no in Reformed thinkers – again, maybe it is there, but I haven’t seen it.)

Edwards grounded all substance in God alone, swallowing up Aristotelian “substance” into Platonic “participation.” This is not to imply pantheism – God is independent of His creation; His aseity remains intact.

It is, however, a very strong view of nature’s direct, immediate dependence on God for its substance and even for its being. God’s action is nature’s substance, and God is the ens entium, the “being of beings.”

Edwards commits himself to the idea of continuous creation; creation is a continuous action, not a one-time event. Nature’s substance can endure only if God continuously substantiates it. It is a continuous ex nihilo creation. The natural world derives its substance from God, and every moment this action must be repeated for the natural order, creation, to endure. God is the only I AM.

That which is real in creation is real because God thinks it. If God were to cease thinking about something, that thing would cease to exist. It is the same for the Trinity: the begetting of the Son is grounded in the perfect idea that the Father has of himself; the Spirit is the perfect and infinite loving of the Father’s idea of Himself.

God is presented as an active agent in all of creation. Creation is something God has done, God is doing, and God will do. My note: I find in this a parallel to the idea that I have been saved, I am being saved, I will be saved. I guess I could say that God is continually creating me….

All of this is to offer two important insights into Edwards’ theology of grace and participation. First, there is a strong continuity between common grace and nature; second, this view of common grace amounts to a theory of participation in being.

Edwards grounds all substantiality and being in God’s action. God and the creature do not share substantiality, but the creature’s substantiality derives from God. While Edwards does not use the term “participation” to describe this, participation is written all over his concept.

The creature is totally dependent on the Creator. This participation relationship is asymmetrical: the dependent creature does have communion with the absolute and self-subsistent Creator.

Conclusion

All of this brings us to a question asked earlier: does Edwards’ view of participation mean that all things participate in divine fullness to some degree? One could conclude the answer to be yes, as all things derive their substance, their existence, their being, from God. In this way, all things participate in God.

Yet Edwards explicitly denies this way of thinking. It isn’t the case that special grace is just common grace magnified by ten or one hundred. These two are of two different types, differing in nature and not, and not in degree.

How does Edwards come to this conclusion? Edwards consistently distinguishes natural principles, rooted in common grace or common participation, from supernatural principles, rooted in participation in divine fullness.

This distinction will be examined in the next post.

Epilogue

God is continually creating. This is an idea I have come across before, and it is interesting to me that I find it also here in a Protestant source. Which reminds me of the posts I have written on the necessity of good works for salvation, using quotes from Protestant sources. What I am getting at: the Protestant tradition offers much more depth and richness than many, myself included, give it credit for.