Jonathan Edwards's Reformed Doctrine of Theosis

Abstract

Amid a scholarly rediscovery of Protestant forms of theosis, questions of whether Jonathan Edwards developed a theotic account of redemption have received increased attention. 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.