God is Generous

All things participate in God for being, argues Edwards. But this participation is for a purpose. All things participate in God for being so that God can communicate his divine fullness to his elect.

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

God gives many gifts: He gives creation its being; He sustains and preserves His creation; He orchestrates creation in His providence and care. These are all common graces. He also gives special graces: justification and reconciliation; sanctification and glorification; He preserves His saints.

All this is grace. Yet, strange as it may seem, these categories can sometimes sound distant from God himself.

In the Spirit, we are made to participate in saving acts that are absolutely divine, and we participate in grace alone. We find our existence not in ourselves but in this participation with God. This is not distant at all. As Salladin writes, quoting T.F. Torrance: “We are up against God in the most absolute sense.” This means something for creation in general, and salvation in particular.

It is right here: God communicates His divine fullness to His elect. It is God giving Himself as a gift, mediated by Christ and appropriate to a created receiver. The Creator-creature distinction is maintained, as it is God in Christ, by the Spirit, that bridges this chasm.

Jonathan Edwards contributes to this conversation while retaining his Reformed tradition. He finds deification through his doctrine of special grace – a communication and participation in divine fullness. While this divine fullness is above created nature, it is nevertheless not the divine essence.

Reformed churches and their theologians are hesitant to consider this idea of participation, but Salladin notes that the water is warming. Edwards maintains Reformed polemical interests via a sympathetic development of Reformed tradition. By doing so, he offers a resource for Reformed theology’s engagement with participation soteriology.

Salladin will present the arguments as follows: first, a broad overview of Edward’s doctrine of special grace, focused on clarifying the category of divine fullness. What is meant by communication, participation, and communion? Next, in what way can divine fullness be infinitely above created nature? Given this distinction, then how is divine fullness different from divine essence? Finally, how are divine fullness and grace related to each other.

I will argue that Edwards posited a teleological relationship between created nature and divine grace. That is, God created the universe in order for it to participate in the divine fullness….

Dealing with the elephant in the room: terminology. Deification, divinization, theosis. These terms bring baggage into any Reformed conversation. Much of the baggage is definitional: just what is meant by these terms? The answer to this isn’t clear-cut, nor is it part of Salladin’s study. He has some hesitancy in using these terms to describe Edward’s work.

…there is a risk that in applying the terms to Edward’s vies of grace, one will imply that his thought borrows from the East or is at least eccentric to his Reformed heritage.

Salladin notes: Edwards was not reading Gregory Palamas. His doctrine was developed within the Reformed tradition. But what to do? What term to use?

Every word has strengths and weaknesses, but in order to communicate one has to use the words available.

Salladin will use these words, and use them interchangeably. These are the words available. It doesn’t make the doctrine Eastern or Hellenistic. Sound doctrine is sound doctrine.

Early in the twentieth century, this idea of deification was viewed as an Eastern Orthodox doctrine, and viewed by many Western theologians as a Hellenistic aberration. No more, says Salladin: Luther scholars now claim deification for Luther, Calvin scholars claim it for Calvin, Wesley scholars claim it for Wesley, and Edwards scholars claim it for Edwards (Salladin provides an extensive footnote to sources for each of these).

Salladin points out that the West began “(re)discovering” deification in its own traditions. It was there before, and then, seemingly, lost – or at least buried under a salvation “moment,” or one-time event, of being declared righteous.

This then led further, to a study of being: our “being” is directly dependent on God, leading to a strong participatory metaphysic. If our entire existence is dependent on God, how do we not participate in doing His will? What is His will but our doing the good works which He prepared for us beforehand?

Conclusion

Edwards stays firmly in the Reformed tradition in developing his conclusions. He does this by synchronizing the Reformed doctrines of the Trinity, special grace, and creational teleology

Taken from a synopsis of Edwards’ work, The End for Which God Created the World:

Edwards argues against contemporaries who claimed that human happiness was the end for which God created the world. Edwards instead puts forth the idea that the reason for God's creation of the world was not human happiness, but the magnification of his own glory and name.

Are we not to participate in this work? Is this not inherent to why God has redeemed us? Is it not inherent to our salvation?

Is this only a Greek notion?