Truce grace is divine

: special grace as participation in divine fullness in the thought of Jonathan Edwards

Abstract

This project is an exploration of Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of grace as divine participation, with the aim of providing resources for Reformed engagement with soteriological participation thought. Soteriological participation, often termed theosis or divinisation or deification, is favoured in a range of theological traditions. Edwards scholars increasingly characterise Edwards’s thought with the term theosis. This study modifies this characterisation by arguing that Edwards’s soteriological participation thought is best captured in his category of divine or true grace. This divine grace is a communication and participation in divine fullness, where the divine fullness is both infinitely above created nature and yet not the divine essence. This concept allows Edwards to navigate the creator-creature distinction in ways that support key Reformed interests. Edwards’s soteriological participation (grace) is not a departure from his tradition, but rather a sympathetic development of it for the purposes of its support and defence. I demonstrate this by showing Edwards’s distinction between created nature and divine fullness, which allows him to promote Reformed understandings of gratuity. At the same time divine fullness is carefully distinguished from the divine essence, preserving divine transcendence while at the same time allowing intimacy between creator and creature. Edwards navigates this creatorcreature distinction and relation, in part, by employing two complementary approaches to participation thought: one is ontological participation that undergirds created nature, and the other is a relational participation that explains divine grace. Created nature finds its teleological fulfilment in this relational, soteriological participation in the divine Trinity. Thus, nature is fulfilled in grace. This work helps clarify how true grace differs from both created nature and the divine essence, and yet relates them relationally and teleologically. In so doing it provides Reformed theology with new resources for engaging soteriological participation thought from the vantage point of its own tradition.

Date of Award	7 Dec 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Stephen Ralph Holmes (Supervisor)