Union with God: An Assessment of Deification (Theosis) in the Theologies of Robert Jenson and John Calvin by Audy Santoso

Abstract

Reviewed by: Union with God: An Assessment of Deification (Theosis) in the Theologies of Robert Jenson and John Calvin by Audy Santoso John W. Hoyum Union with God: An Assessment of Deification (Theosis) in the Theologies of Robert Jenson and John Calvin. By Audy Santoso. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021. 298 pp. By putting Robert Jenson’s view of theosis in conversation with John Calvin’s, Audy Santoso’s work takes up a subject of intense interest in recent years. Jenson’s retrieval of theosis and his appropriation of the new Finnish reading of Luther might suggest that it [End Page 490] is Luther, instead of Calvin, who would be the right Reformation figure to include in this study. Yet in focusing on theosis as a point of contact between (Jenson’s) Lutheranism and (Calvin’s) Reformed theology, Santoso nevertheless takes up a subject of great ecumenical significance. This book rightly identifies both figures with a common legacy that imagines salvation as union with God. The first, introductory chapter sets out the general features of theosis in the broad heritage of Christian theology. Among the instances of theosis in Western theology, Santoso includes the Finnish reading and its contention that, in Luther’s doctrine of justification, there is a real presence of Christ in faith itself. As for Calvin, Santoso helpfully notes Calvin’s own criticisms of Osiander’s tendency to ascribe the indwelling righteousness of Christ to the divine nature alone. The second chapter explores Jenson’s theology in more detail, culminating with an examination of his turn toward deification as a paradigm for figuring human salvation as participation in the divine life. Santoso rightly draws creation into this discussion, because it is creation’s original envelopment by the divine life that underwrites the eschatological reconciliation of created being with its proper end in God, as Jenson sees it. Chapter three examines Calvin’s use of union as the inclusive image of human salvation. One crucial subtext of the engagement with Calvin is a debate over the status of union in Reformed theology: is the doctrine of justification the overarching principle of human salvation, conceived as a declaration extra nos? Or is justification properly situated within the wider and more inclusive horizon of union with God? Santoso prefers the latter alternative, rejecting Bruce McCormack’s contention that justification is the principal paradigm of salvation in Calvin’s theology. Having set forth the doctrines of deification that appear in Jenson and Calvin, Santoso proceeds to a discussion of the Lord’s Supper as a point of contact between Calvin’s view of union and Jenson’s theology of deification. Santoso suggests that Jenson sublates Christ and the church to the degree that the eschatological tension between the present and the future is lost, thus resulting in an over-realized eschatology that cannot properly distinguish Jesus, the Spirit, and those gathered at the table. [End Page 491] In the fifth, evaluative chapter, Santoso concludes by noting the similarities and differences between Calvin and Jenson. He uses three criteria to assess the coherence of their accounts of theosis: the creator-creature distinction, the mediatorial role of Christ, and the Holy Spirit’s reconstitution of the human self. Santoso contends that Jenson’s Lutheran emphasis on hearing undermines the physical dimensions of salvation: thus participation in God is not simply hearing the internal triune conversation, but is doxology involving all the human senses in everlasting worship before the throne of the lamb. This book compares and contrasts Jenson and Calvin, with Calvin supplying the needed supplement to some of Jenson’s weaker formulations, especially his conflation of Christ, the Spirit, and the church. However, the work would have been strengthened if the constructive significance of these comparisons were drawn out, perhaps especially with ecumenical dialogue in view. John W. Hoyum Denny Park Lutheran Church Seattle, Washington Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc