Participation Without Identity

How can a saint participate in God without becoming identical with God? Eastern Orthodox Palamism famously addresses this by distinguishing between God’s essence, which is incommunicable and inaccessible, and God’s energies, which may be shared with the saint.

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

Real participation without sacrificing the Creator-creature distinction. The Eastern Orthodox have explained this as described, identified with Gregory Palamas but inherited from Maximus the Confessor and earlier Church fathers.

While this view is embraced in the East, there is some pushback from the Reformed perspective. This distinction drives a wedge between the economic and immanent Trinity, making God too distant and unreachable. Additionally, it divides God’s being from God’s actions, with some seeing this as demoting the Son and Spirit as something like God’s agents.

As my aside, I have been favorably predisposed to this idea of essence and energies, but not from the angle of somehow dividing God. I see it as useful in describing how I am not God and can never be God. In other words, for anyone who believes we are to grow more (I will use the least controversial words in the Reformed tradition) Christ-like, there must be some way to describe how I will never be – and can never be – completely Christ-like…the God-man.

Returning to Salladin, Edwards did not incorporate the Eastern essence-energies distinction – and almost certainly never came in contact with the Palamism that defined it. Yet he did develop a description that sounds very much like it – perhaps at least to all but the most highly trained, and therefore nit-picky, theologian.

Edwards distinguishes the divine essence, which is not communicated in grace, from divine fullness, which is. Divine fullness is the term used by Edwards that comes to this idea of God’s energies. This fullness is written of often in Scripture, for example:

Ephesians 3: 14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

John 1: 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. … 16 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.

Saints are not made partakers in the essence of God, but, as the Scripture says, we are made partakers of God’s fullness – described by Edwards as the “goodness of His nature” and God’s “spiritual beauty and happiness according to the measure and capacity of a creature.”

Yet, the issue remains: if some Reformed theologians push back against the essence-energies distinction, does this suggest that they must also push back on Edwards’ essence-divine fullness distinction? Salladin offers his conclusion up front:

This chapter will argue that there is a coherent distinction between divine essence and divine fullness, and one that does not drive a wedge between the immanent and economic Trinity.

Salladin demonstrates this by examining Edwards’ doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, and grace. Salladin will examine each of these through two complimentary approaches to participation as utilized by Edwards: methexis (the sharing of substance), and koinōnia (a shared relationship). The divine essence is grounded in the first form of participation; the divine fullness in the second.

I will offer only an overview of Salladin’s examination on these three aspects, partly for space and partly because it is a bit beyond my understanding. To the extent I do understand it, I am not endorsing all of it. I just intend to accurately reflect Salladin’s description of Edwards’ views. In any case, where I might have some disagreement, I do not see these as reason to undermine Edwards’ views on deification / theosis within the Reformed tradition.

The Trinity

Edwards never published a treatise specifically on the Trinity. Yet, through his writings, his views on the Trinity are inherent. In order to understand how Edwards achieves both distinction and intimacy between Creator and creature, one must begin with his doctrine of God.

Edwards’s God is a God who is happy and good. … Happiness and goodness are, for Edwards, inextricably linked: one implies the other.

I will use the term beatitudo: happiness, meaning fulfillment through other regarding action – love. God is love! To communicate this happiness is to be good. As Edwards writes, “…goodness is delight in communicating happiness.” Yes, an ethical insight, but for Edwards it opens the door to his view of the Trinity.

If God is both happy and good, He must communicate this happiness to another. He cannot be a monad, alone. Yet, the partaker cannot be a creature, because a creature cannot receive the infinite communication of happiness that God’s goodness demands. Therefore, in some sense, God must be plural in order to fully communicate this happiness. Hence, the Son. Edwards see the Son as God’s perfect idea of Himself. The Son’s generation is found here.

The Holy Spirit is this communication of happiness. Edwards describes the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son – a mutual bond of perfect love, delight, happiness, and joy. This third person is the Deity in act. God (the Father), His idea (the Son) and His will or love (the Holy Spirit). In this manner, Edwards finds all of God’s attributes.

So, how then are there three persons? It is because each has understanding and will – not a separate understanding, but a shared understanding in three centers of consciousness.

Focusing on the Son: the Son within the Trinity offers the pattern for a graced saint.

The Son’s reception and return of divine love becomes the model for the dynamic of grace. …the church’s reception and return of the Holy Spirit in the economy of grace is patterned on the Son’s reception and return of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity ad intra.

Grace is our partaking of the fullness (but not the essence) shared between the Father and the Son. Edwards writes:

“…the fullness of God consists in the holiness and happiness of the Deity …. Hence our communion with God the Father and God the Son consists in our partaking of the Holy Ghost, which is their Spirit…”

Further, Edwards writes:

“The Holy Spirit is the sum of all good. ‘Tis the fullness of God. The holiness and happiness of the Godhead consists in it; and in the communion or partaking of it consists all the true loveliness and happiness of the creature.”

Just as the happiness of the Trinity consists in this partaking of the Holy Spirit, the same is true for the creature. Divine fullness comes via partaking of the Holy Spirit. Yet, unlike the Trinity, we do not share in the essence.

Finally, this divine fullness is mediated to the creature through the incarnate Christ. The human Jesus offers us a view of how we partake of this fullness as a creature. Which leads to Edwards’ views on…

Christology

I will offer a brief overview here. Take as Edwards’ basis a Chalcedonian Christology, albeit it isn’t fully clear to me what is meant by this term given that Chalcedon was modified or cleaned up and clarified one hundred years later (I will eventually get to this after I gain a better grounding in the centuries before and immediately after Chalcedon).

For this reason, I will not go into great detail on this section. In any case, it is a two-nature Christology (for those unfamiliar with my views here: yes, the Incarnate Christ was both God and man; precisely how this is so is, in my opinion, beyond our comprehension, therefore beyond our words).

From what I read, however, I don’t know that it must be so in order to gain an understanding of Edwards’ meaning of deification: yes, Christ must be both God and man, but I believe precisely how this is so is irrelevant to Edwards’ bigger picture of man’s participation and deification.

The incarnation of the Son of God is the Christian church’s explanation for how the infinite ontological chasm between the Creator and the creature may be bridged.

Divine fullness (theosis) is salvation in its most complete sense. It is for this reason that the early church fought so strongly for the full deity of Christ against the Arian and other heresies of the time. Without this “bridge” in Christ, the chasm would remain infinite and salvation in this most complete sense would remain always out of reach.

Here the koinōnia of the immanent Trinity becomes exportable to the creature…

If He is not both God and man, the koinōnia is not exportable to us. No divine fullness is available to the creature. Without this, no salvation.

Grace

The fullness of Christ is the fullness given in grace. Christological fullness and the fullness given in divine grace are closely analogous: both represent the Holy Spirit as a bond of love.

Edwards echoes the exchange formula associated with theosis, writing, “[Christ] became in all things like unto us that his disciples should in many things become like unto him.” While in Christ this grace as divine fullness is without measure, for the creature it is measured according to our capacities. This demonstrates our dependence and lack of autonomy.

Yet, our capacity is not static:

…the measure and capacity language allows Edwards to posit not only the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature, but also the perpetual progress of the creature toward the Creator.

We will forever increase in our participation in the Trinitarian union between the Father and the Son, but never arrive. From Edwards:

“This was the design of Christ, to bring it to pass, the he, and his Father, and his people, might all be united in one…that the church should be as it were admitted into the society of the blessed Trinity.”

How much more grace is there than this? Edwards is quite specific: the gift of grace is the gift of admission into the society of the Trinity – not in essence, but in relationship.

This is salvation.

Conclusion

So, back to the opening question: is there a meaningful distinction between essence and fullness? Salladin offers that there is. These differ not only in content, but also in their respective character of participation.

The Northampton pastor’s distinction between essence and fullness is consistent throughout his doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, and grace. They correspond to different traditions of participation, and they relate to differing fields of discourse: one to quiddity, and the other to questions of relationality.

Methexis is not koinonia – we need not share essence to share in relationship. Edwards establishes a profound intimacy between Creator and creature without fusing the two: God gives Himself in grace without abrogating the essence of the saint.