AProposed Method of Onto-Typology for aTrinitarian Theology of Nature
7
A Proposed Method of Onto-Typology
for a Trinitarian Theology of Nature
Jonathan Edwards’ Creation Metaphysics
and Natural Typology
Introducing Edwards’ Typology as a Method of Discerning the Analogical Language of Nature
In the previous chapter, a Trinitarian Theology of Nature was proposed that moves beyond a popularized naturalistic view of nature. This theology is grounded in an imminent, yet transcendent God willing the natural order into existence according to a divine plan. In this plan, all mechanisms, structures and processes found in nature are a result of God’s acting on commitment based on previously established dispositions that originate in the mind of God. The forces we perceive such as gravity, electromagnetism, small and weak nuclear forces are not brute powers unto themselves, but are ways God acts consistently and faithfully. Molecular structures and higher ordered processes and pathways are ways God acts in a coordinated fashion. In this way, what the creature encounters, and what science reports, are the ways God is continuously acting. However, in addition to functioning in the physical, chemical, biological, and cosmological mechanisms of day-to-day life in the universe, nature also seems to bring something else to the human creature. Something profoundly spiritual and emotional.
Nearly every people group over historical time, despite time period, culture or religion has reported a transcendent sense in nature inciting awe and delight. There is a numinous sense of the divine that traces its lineage to the earliest humans who worshipped the elements of nature, such as the sun. Jonathan Edwards would say that this occurs because God formulated all of the complex structures and mechanisms in nature not only for function, but also to carry intrinsic messages of the divine that disclosing the divine Self in and through the creation. In Edwards’ view, this is the intended hermeneutic of scriptures such as Habakkuk 2:14; Isaiah 6:3; and others declaring that the whole earth is filled with the knowledge and glory of God. As we have explored earlier, scriptures such as Romans 1:20 give keen insight into a loving God who is ever communicating through the natural world so that the creature is in contact with God every moment of every day.
Such a revelation would contend a distinction between natural knowledge of God versus revealed knowledge of God. This reassessment offers not an ‘either/or’ theology, but a new conceptual frame where natural knowledge is revealed knowledge. Nature only holds knowledge of God because the Creator intended it so, and as such, God reveals in divine Self-disclosure through what has been made. This theological position holds that all creation was created in Christ, through Christ, by Christ, and for Christ, whereby the knowledge of such is revealed by the Holy Spirit. Thus, as we have shown earlier, this contemporary view of a Theology of Nature is intentionally Trinitarian. We turn our attention now to the actual language of nature used to communicate to the creature claimed by a Trinitarian Theology of Nature and propose the following two foundational suppositions:
Supposition 1: Scripture mandates that creatures know God’s (Trinitarian) essence by a) his Self-revelation in the person and work of Christ, and b) through his works in creation. In accomplishing the latter, God has instantiated a language of nature that consists in analogies, shadows, and images of divine things.
Supposition 2: Analogies embedded in the creation are ontologically real, given to the creature as an act of divine communication from God to the human heart and intellect. They are not merely epistemic anthropomorphic human assignments.
We begin addressing Supposition 1 by the idea that God’s Self-revealing must be analogical in order to be comprehensible to the creature. Martin Luther put it this way:
God in his essence is altogether unknowable, nor is it possible to define or put into words what He is, though we burst in the effort. It is for this reason that God lowers Himself to the level of our weak comprehension and presents Himself to us in images, in coverings, as it were, in simplicity adapted to a child that in some measure it may be possible for Him to be known by us.
And Luther goes on:
That Scripture thus assigns to God the form, voice, actions, emotions, etc., of a human being not only serves to show consideration for the uneducated and the weak; but we great and learned men, who are versed in the Scriptures, are also obliged to adopt these simple images, because God has presented them to us and has revealed Himself to us through them.
Luther is reporting here that as humans we “burst in the effort” trying to know and articulate God. He instructs that God gives us “images” and “coverings” in order to reveal Himself to us through them. This quote from a founder of the Reformed tradition illustrates a strong thread that has coursed through historical theology regarding analogical language and, as a result, much theological debate has ensued over its authenticity and use. In order to proceed toward building a constructive Trinitarian Theology of Nature, it seems fitting to deploy the tool of analogy to arrive at understanding a bona fide language of nature. The next step involves developing a reliable analytic methodology. First, we claim that God speaks to humanity in terms of analogical language. Second, there must be a way to discern the meaning behind the analogy in order to be open to the divine revelation embedded therein. Let’s take the first point in discerning analogical language in the creation, then move on to the second point regarding a method.
While analogia finds its roots in the Thomistic scholastic tradition, Edwards made ample use of its efficacy both theologically and pastorally. We may ask the question, why turn to Jonathan Edwards? Edwards is a unique voice out of the many others who have thought theologically regarding the creation. Edwards the theologian had an extensive breadth of knowledge regarding the contemporary science of his day. Edwards the pastor incorporated this knowledge into his sermons and his ministry. It is for this reason that we turn to Edwards for direction as to how to appropriate his work constructively for the purpose of a contemporary theology of nature, one that informs believers spiritually. The relevance of Edwards unfolds as we read forward beginning in his early years (circa 1722) as a young pastor in New York, then throughout his life ministry, and finally as missionary, then College President until his premature death in 1758. What emerges out of Edwards’ lifelong metaphysics and theology of the natural world, along with his astute study of the science of his time, is a bold claim that God has imbued both the natural world and Scripture with knowledge of divine things. He says, “I am not ashamed to own that I believe that the whole universe, heaven and earth, air and seas, and the divine constitution and history of the holy Scriptures, be full of divine things as language is of words” (italics mine). In this quote, Edwards affirms two revelations of the divine glory: through the creation and the holy Scriptures. By the “holy Scriptures” it is meant to encompass the entire revelation of God in the Bible culminating in the incarnation of Christ. The claim Edwards makes in this quote, that is—that the revelation of God is not only given to humanity in the incarnate Son, but also in the creation as well—is not an isolated example within the corpus of Edwards’ writings as theologian, pastor, and missionary. Rather, across more than thirty years of theological and pastoral writing, Edwards consistently claims that God’s divine, Trinitarian, redemptive nature is revealed in what has been made, and that God does so in a “language” embedded in the structures of the natural world. Edwards, in addition to his elaborate Christology, philosophy, ethics, ecclesiology, and so on, was also a natural theologian, a forerunner of a contemporary Trinitarian Theology of Nature.
First and foremost, Edwards was preeminently theocentric in an era when deistic views of divine action stemming from an anthropological starting point were coming into fashion. Edwards affirms our claim of God as the epicenter of revealed glory, as he states in the Dissertation I, Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, “The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair.” Edwards, by affirming that God is the “beginning, middle and end in this affair” places the whole of God’s revelation in God alone, including natural revelation. In this way, we bring Edwards forward as a voice speaking for a Trinitarian Theology of Nature affirming that humankind, by its own logic and reason, cannot find or search out the glory of God, particularly in and through the natural world or the findings of science.
Edwards affirms that God created with the mind to embed analogies of his divine nature in all his works. According to Edwards, God intentionally created all of the structures and forces governing in the universe analogically in order to reflect attributes of the divine nature so that humankind could understand these mysteries in a creaturely manner. Edwards says, “Again, it is apparent and allowed that there is a great and remarkable analogy in God’s works.” For Edwards, the entirety of creation was intended by God not only to function for life to exist, but to simultaneously communicate analogically to reveal God’s eternal and infinite attributes and redemption within a finite world. It is our task in this chapter to now define Edwards’ use of analogy as one inciting a resemblance—a proportional comparison even—between the spiritual, which is the “superior” or “primary” beauty, and the material world, which is its inferior analogical shadow. He says, “And why should we not suppose that he makes the inferior in imitation of the superior, the material of the spiritual, on purpose, to have a resemblance and shadow of the spiritual world?” For Edwards, it was God’s original plan to communicate the truths of the spiritual world to the beloved creatures He made to dwell in a material world. In God’s design, the material was intentionally made as a shadow of that spiritual realm.
However, Edwards does not stop at the idea that the material world is analogically related to the spiritual world. He embarks upon a radically new way of understanding this analogical connection, ontologically, much in the same way Old Testament prefigurings connect to New Testament fulfillment. In biblical typology, the Old Testament type points to the New Testament antitype fulfillment.
He claimed that the biblical type/antitype system, that revealed God’s overarching plan and conveyed knowledge of God’s mysteries, could also be applied to the natural world. This sets Edwards apart from other theologians beginning with the patristics and up through post-liberal theologians. Even Hans Frei refers to the authenticity of biblical prefigurings as a unification of the whole of the God-story narrative. He says, “The customary use of figuration was to show that Old Testament persons, events and prophesies were fulfilled in the New Testament. It was a way of turning the variety of biblical books into a single, unitary cannon, one that embraced in particular the differences between the Old and New Testaments.”
As Frei states in his post-liberal exegesis of the whole of the biblical narrative as a structurally unified whole, so Edwards in a very unique and never-before formulated manner applies natural typology to represent a unified whole of God’s Self-disclosure in the creation and the biblical text. In nature, types are messages embedded within structures and mechanisms that point to, or foreshadow, spiritual truths which are the antitypes. In this way, Edwards, among the many other theological voices speaking to typology, offers a fully distinct character in his engagement with the natural.
However, in his lifetime, Edwards did not formulate a constructive theology of nature using this method. He wrote widely in notebooks, most extensively in a hand-bound notebook he titled Images or Shadows of Divine Things, as well as other writings about such ideas. It is the goal here to take the baton, as it were, from Edwards and continue where his work left off. In Edwards we may find support that analogia and typology are connected as the “shadows of being,” representing an ontological structure of messages of the Divine, embedded by the Creator into the natural world. In addressing Supposition 2, we find support that God had in mind before creating the world such a system; it was part of the end for which God created the world, with the intent to communicate God’s Trinitarian nature to the creature, out of infinite love. In this construct, types and antitypes are not propositional, but rather are ontological, originating in God’s “Original Ultimate End” in creation, and only through revelation is this end accomplished. Edwards says, “Indeed, this affair seems properly to be an affair of divine revelation . . . he best knows his own heart, and what his own ends and designs were in the wonderful works which he has wrought.” For Edwards, this was precisely the reason why God created. In Edwards we find the following four claims: a) only God as the sovereign epicenter reveals God; b) God created with the intent to communicate two unified revelations of the Trinitarian nature of God, in the incarnate Son and in the creation; c) knowledge of God’s glory revealed by God in the creation is conveyed analogically (analogia); and d) analogies exist in the ontological structure of types and antitypes intentionally created by God.
According to Edwards, God intentionally created everything in the universe analogically to reflect attributes of Himself in order that humankind could understand these mysteries in some tangible, yet analogous way. The entirety of the creation was intended by God not only to function for life to exist, but also to simultaneously reveal God’s eternal attributes and redemption. Edwards goes on to say it this way, “Tis very fit and becoming of God, who is infinitely wise, so to order things that there should be a voice of his in his works instructing those that behold them and pointing forth and showing divine mysteries and things more appertaining to himself and his spiritual kingdom.” Likewise, Tibor Fabiny says that for Edwards, nature is God’s acting and communicating Himself for the sake of the creature. He summarized Edwards’ position as follows, “When a converted person knows and loves God’s beauty, and when the physical universe is known and delighted in by a converted person as an image of God’s beauty, then God’s knowledge and beauty within the Trinity are repeated and enlarged in time and history, The end for which God created the world, which is to repeat God’s inner glory . . . is actualized.” Here Fabiny indicates that the creation reflects the Trinity, and when it is apprehended by a converted person this will result in delight, bringing glory to God, which in the Edwardsean scheme is the end for which God created the world.
However, the conceptual theology of God communicating to humankind through the natural world in “shadows of divine things” did not begin with Edwards. As we have seen previously, it has precursors originating in the Augustinian tradition and represented in the medieval scholastics such as St. Bonaventure, “For creatures are shadows, echoes, and pictures of that first, most powerful, most wise, and most perfect Principle, of that eternal source, light, and fullness; of that efficient, exemplary, and ordering art. They are vestiges, images, and spectacles proposed to us for the contuition of God. They are divinely given signs.” Bonaventure saw in the noble, natural order, a reflection or “vestiges” of God’s likeness, akin to Augustine’s vestigia trinitatis: “It is necessary that we, viewing the Creator through the works of his hands, raise up our minds to the contemplation of the Trinity, of which creation bears the mark in a certain and due proportion.” Augustine, Bonaventure, and Edwards made profound observations regarding the embedded revelation of God within the natural world. Likewise, in the Reformed tradition Calvin teaches the necessity of seeing the creation, and all its creatures, as “mirrors” of God’s attributes of wisdom, justice, goodness, and power:
There is no doubt that the Lord would have us uninterruptedly occupied in this holy meditation; that, while we contemplate in all creatures, as in mirrors, those immense riches of his wisdom, justice, goodness, and power, we should not merely run over them cursorily, and, not to speak, with a fleeting glance; but we should ponder them at length, turn them over in our minds seriously and faithfully, and recollect them repeatedly.
To Calvin, as for Augustine, Bonaventure, and Edwards, this task of seeing God’s attributes of wisdom, justice, goodness, and power in all aspects of the creation is of paramount importance and should be taken seriously in seeking and serving the God who created. These messages hold vital information and experiential knowledge necessary for created beings to live out the faith, to act in justice, and to be transformed by God’s power, grace, and love.
Now, to return to the point above, there must be a way to discern the meaning of the analogy in order to be open to the divine revelation embedded therein. This lends to the need of a theological method, as McGrath asserts, “Yet the very idea of natural theology designates a method.” One approach in developing a method may be achieved by extending Edwards’ method of typology of the natural world.
Edwards’ published work, Images or Shadows of Divine Things, points toward a method concerning the hidden mysteries of God’s eternal attributes in the fabric of nature. While Edwards initiated this new typological method, he did not formulate a rigorous, systematic method during his lifetime. What Edwards did was to expand the biblical typological method of his day that used Old Testament figures and images as types pointing to the antitypes revealed in Christ in the New Testament. Edwards asserted that this method of typology could also apply to the creation; he saw images and forms in nature, and in scientific discoveries, as types representing the antitypes of divine attributes, of the Christ, and of redemption. As Edwards deciphered biblical types, which served as both an eschatological and spiritual shadow of the things to come, so he likewise explored natural types serving as shadows of things yet to come. This has been called “natural typology” in recent literature.
In this way, there is a methodological framework to extend Edwards’ shadows of divine things into the analogies found in messages in the natural world. As we have explored earlier in this chapter, the language of nature must be analogical since it cannot be otherwise, and since these analogies are ontologically created by God, we refer to the analogy of being, the analogia entis. The Thomistic understanding of analogy showed us that analogy must be a form of divine communication so that created beings can understand the spiritual through a lesser representation in the physical realm. In a more contemporary treatment, Emil Brunner in contending with Karl Barth claims a biblical grounding for the analogia entis, “Whatever the Creator makes bears the imprint of His Creator-Spirit in itself; hence it is to some extent “similar” to Him and is therefore a “parable” or “analogy.” The idea of analogia entis, like that of the Revelation in Creation, from which it is derived, cannot be severed from the Biblical doctrine of Creation.” Brunner here is exacting biblical exegesis over a Barthian claim in a Christ-only scheme of God’s revelatory power. He relies on the entirety of the biblical witness attesting to the truth of “created analogies” that even allow us to speak of God in human terms.
If we continue reading Brunner on this topic, we find Brunner advocating, over Barth’s opposition, for a biblical view of the analogia entis as he did with Natural Theology, “Here, however, we have a repetition of what happened a few years ago on the occasion of the controversy about Natural Theology: Barth’s “surgical” temperament—and also his “medical” insight into the seriousness of a disease—that drives him not only to cut out the malignant growth but also a great deal of healthy tissue as well, in order to be quite sure that evil has been eliminated.” He recounts here an observation that his esteemed colleague Karl Barth, while attempting to remove incorrect doctrine, sometimes also excises truth as well in cutting out the “malignant growth” along with a “great deal of healthy tissue as well.” Brunner proceeds to affirm that he indeed advocates for God’s revelation in nature through, specifically, analogy. Once more we see Brunner relying on a biblical foundation for his theological stance on God’s own design of reflecting Himself analogically in the created realm. He says next, “he [Barth] also rejects the Biblical principle of analogy, and indeed every kind of possible analogy in created existence; in so doing he not only contradicts his own theology, which like every other theology which is not satisfied with mere negations, lives on the principle of Analogy. God can, in a parabolic way, reflect God in order to express God’s revealed Being, and His revealed relation to man.” In this way, Brunner again brings us back to the biblical account while simultaneously bringing the Thomistic analogia entis forward as a bona-fide way of God revealing the divine Self to the creature in God’s works of creation.
For Thomas, created analogies exist in the creation in a lesser proportionality communicating something of the attributes of the Creator. This was advanced by the Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara, who extended the analogia entis to include a transcendent God who creates ex nihilo, immanent in a continuous creation. This resonates with Edwards’ creation metaphysics and might serve us well in formulating a method of natural typology. The analogia entis, then, is related to typology as a system where by faith, the analogia entis in the natural world is communicated to the creature through revelation by God in and through the type prefiguring its antitype.
Edwards’ use of natural types was consistently grounded in his Doctrine of Creation, in his sermons, and his philosophical metaphysics of nature. Edwards worked for over thirty years to arrive at his creation metaphysics, that is, his ontological understanding of natural types in terms of his philosophical idealism. On Edwards’ view, natural types originated as ontologically real ideas in God’s mind before the creation of the world. As it relates to Edwards’ idealism, types and the role they would play in communicating divine things, were a subordinate end of God’s Original Ultimate End. Natural types are “real-ized” into being as God supposes them into existence; the ontological status of material objects in the physical world becomes real in relation to human minds because God raises the created mind to do so. Edwards is resolutely committed to a panentheist view of the God-world relation since all of the creation exists in God, and is not separate from God. Likewise, since the creation is being realized into being moment-by moment, Edwards’ creation metaphysic entails a continuous creation theology.
Thus, on Edwards’ view, God intended to emanate knowledge and glory of the divine and spiritual attributes into the ontic physical structures of creation for the intent purpose of continually communicating these truths to the creatures He loves. The human creatures were given “eyes to see” as it were, established in their intellect and reason, as well as the heart, as dispositions enabling them to receive divine revelation. Emil Brunner says it this way in his doctrine of creation, “When, however, through God’s Word the “inward eye” of man is really enlightened, then he is able to see the divine revelation in Creation, as it really is; then he is able to understand the analogia entis aright and to praise God the Creator in the works of the Creation.” There are several illustrative point to be made from this quote. First, Brunner affirms the “inward eye” of all humans fashioned to be enlightened by divine revelation in the structures and elements of nature. Second, when this revelation is given and received, humankind is able to see nature “as it really is”—God’s divine communication. Brunner does not stop there, but affirms that this knowledge and experience of God will elicit praise. This is keenly akin to Edwards’ theological metaphysics contending for why God created, or in Edwards’ terminology, God’s Original Ultimate End in Creation. It is not solely God emanating the knowledge and glory of Himself as a display of his power, beauty and grandeur as a creation. Rather, God’s ultimate end is in sharing of the intra-Trinitarian excellence and fullness with the creature, all for the creature’s absolute delight, utter fulfillment and praise.
It is this human experience that brings God’s infinite glory back to its source as He delights in his own beloved creatures delighting in Him. This accomplishes God’s Original Ultimate End in creating a universe. Natural types in the creation are an important initial step in communicating the divine fullness to the creature, and in this manner serve as an all-important subordinate end, in a long line of successive ends, toward the fulfillment of God’s Original Ultimate End.
Edwards was fully convinced of the authenticity of natural types as ontologically real, and purposeful in God’s overall plan for humanity. In this manner, natural types are onto-types, in that they are not mere propositional human assignments, randomly assigned. Rather, since all of God’s ideas are real, and natural types are ideas in God’s mind intending to be created, the types are ontologically real, or for our purposes, onto-types. He whole-heartedly believed the method of doing natural typology, that is, the revelation of God-embedded onto-types, to be theologically valid for the following three reasons:
Given these reasons, we are able to bring Edwards forward into a contemporary discussion of a Trinitarian Theology of Nature and propose an expansion of his precursory method of natural typology. From reading across Edwards’ works we find that he had a two-fold method in his natural typology. First, he relied on personal experience in the natural world, using “common knowledge” of seasons, ecology, agriculture, and cosmology. Second, he drew from findings in contemporary science found in the science textbooks of his day. If we begin there, we can propose a methodology that allows a) for understanding of God’s attributes from personal engagement with nature. This means, that as individuals are taught this method in congregational settings from the pulpit, or personal spiritual study, they can open themselves to divine revelation for personal spiritual growth and Christian maturity in their faith, and b) this method can be extended to receiving divine messages from the current findings in biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, and astronomy. As Edwards showed in Shadows of Divine Things, the mechanisms of the natural world can communicate God’s excellencies revealed through concordance of scientific and theological knowledge.
However, as Edwards discusses in the sermon, “The Divine and Supernatural Light,” this revelatory knowledge of God’s holy and supremely beautiful attributes does not originate in the mind of humans, but is given by God, for the glory and praise of God. If we apply the understanding of the divine and supernatural light of God illuminating the mind and heart to God’s beauty and glory through the creation, then this venture of doing natural typology has far-reaching outcomes and benefits for those engaged in it, and for those who are touched by it. Even with the two-fold method of a) personal engagement with nature and b) drawing from the findings of the sciences, there is one and only one outcome or effect, as Edwards says in “Divine and Supernatural Light,” “This light is such as effectually influences the inclination and changes the nature of the soul.” This engagement with the communication of God’s divine attributes and excellencies changes the soul, and also changes the way we understand the nature of reality, the role of the findings that science produces, as well as the teleological significance of our world and universe.
Appreciating the ontological reality of the structure of the physical world—not only within the confines of a limited understanding of the mechanisms that tell us what something is, such as knowing the spin and mass of an electron, the molecular structure of rhodopsin that allows it to be activated by light, the three dimensional configuration of the insulin receptor that allows it to bind to insulin—but how it is so. How nature is so is located in something far greater. If nature is viewed ontologically as God willing it into being, communicating within its structures physical and non-physical truths, and revealing such knowledge to the creature, then how nature is so is because it is fully and completely an act of God. We will have come closer to Leibnitz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason, knowing beyond the mechanistic descriptions science provides so well, and entering into an ontology that tells us how it is so; by the God who is acting moment-by-moment for a complete knowledge of reality.
In other words, science does not need typology to do science. Science only needs to continue to uncover the mechanisms as it has done so well. Revelation of the Trinitarian God will come out of these findings. As a result, this divine communication will be a light shining into the soul, as Edwards declares, “This knowledge is that which is above all others sweet and joyful. Men have a great deal of pleasure in human knowledge, in studies of natural things; but this is nothing to that joy which arises from this divine light shining into the soul. This light gives a view of those things that are merely the most exquisitely beautiful and capable of delighting the eye of the understanding.” Thus, in doing the theological task of natural typology, whether in personal engagement with nature or drawing from the findings of the sciences the outcome is the same: communication of the excellences and eternally good attributes of the divine Creator to the creature. This wondrous divine and supernatural light that enters not only the mind, but also the heart, is what brings great joy, giving spiritual gifts that build strength and courage, as Edwards concludes, “This spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so powerful as this to support persons in affliction, and to give the mind peace and brightness, in this stormy and dark world.” The glories and excellencies of the Creator, emanated into the creation are intended to bring the creature delight in this experiential knowledge, and thus remanate delight and glory back to God.
The project of natural typology will need guidelines for understanding and authenticating interpretation of natural types and their antitypes. In the next chapter, a set of criteria will be proposed. This criteria will be used to ascertain whether Edwards’ method applies all the way down to the base foundations of the creation. It is the explicit goal to hold true to the guidelines set forth by Edwards and refine them for contemporary use in doing a theology of the natural world.
. Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6–14, 46.
. Edwards, “Images of Divine Things,” in Typological Writings, 152.
. It is clear from the corpus of Edwards’ writings that he affirms two consonant revelations of God in the creation and in the Incarnate Son. However, for the sake of our argument at hand, in this section I will be emphasizing Edwards’ position on the communication of God’s divine nature in and through the creation.
. Edwards, “Dissertation I, Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in Ethical Writings, 531.
. Edwards, Ethical Writings, 53. See Winslow, Lisanne, A Great and Remarkable Analogy: The Onto-Typology of Jonathan Edwards, Wipf & Stock, 2020.
. Edwards, Typological Writings, 53.
. Frei, The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative, 23.
. In a parallel line of scholarship, Erich Auerbach in his short treatise titled “Figura” gives a post-liberal view of biblical figure and fulfillment. However, as described by Zakai and Weinstein, Auerbach in response to the Aryan philology of the Nazi Revolution provided an apology for the necessity of the Old Testament in prefiguring the New Testament. They cite Auerbach in referring to Moses and Christ as the figure and fulfillment, respectively. See, Zakai and Weinstein “Erich Auerbach and His ‘Figura,’” 321–22.
. The phrase “shadows of being” was used by Edwards in Miscellanies no. 362, “The whole outward creation is but the shadows of being [and] so made to represent spiritual things,” Miscellanies, 434.
. At first glance, this may seem to harken back to Platonic Ideas, or forms. For Plato, forms such as beauty are more real than any object made to imitate them. Plato held a fairly sharp distinction between the changeless realm of eternal forms which are timeless and unchanging, in comparison to the material world containing physical things that are in a constant state of flux and change. See McFarland et al., The Cambridge Dictionary of Theology. While several Edwards scholars locate Edwards as a Neo-Platonist, I align myself with the position that what Edwards was developing is a distinct view in his understanding of God’s attributes, that is—the knowledge of and glory of God, emanated into the creation as an act of divine communication. This will be expanded later in this chapter and in following chapters.
. Edwards, Ethical Writings, 419.
. Edwards, Typological Writings, 67.
. Fabiny, “Edwards and Biblical Typology,” 99.
. Fabiny, “Edwards and Biblical Typology,” 122.
. Bonaventure, Works of St. Bonaventure, 73.
. Edwards follows this same vocabulary, “shadow,” used also by his earlier contemporary Puritan writers on biblical typology.
. Augustine, De Trinitate, 12.
. Calvin, Institutes, 1:180.
. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe, 5.
. Edwards, “Images or Shadows of Divine Things,” in Typological Writings, 3–146.
. Zakai, “The Medieval and Scholastic Dimensions of Edwards’ Philosophy of Nature.”
. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 22.
. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 22.
. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 43.
. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 43.
. Thomas attested to this representation of created analogies as a causal relation between the Divine and the creation in terms of analogical language. He was careful in delineating univocal use of a word or concept, in exact meaning, with an equivocal use of a word as a grammatical homonym, spelled and pronounced the same way yet having different meanings depending on the context. For example, take the word “wave.” Wave used univocally refers to the function of any undulation of curves, such as sound waves, microwaves, the wave function of a photon and so on, yet is used equivocally when applied to the movement gesture of the hand, a swell or surge, or as the onset of a disease or social movement. In terms of language about God, Thomas in his famous treatise on analogy in the Summa Theologica claimed, “It is impossible to predicate anything univocally of God and creatures. (See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia q. 13, aa. 56.) The very effects of God must be less than its source, but they can tell us something of God. A word can reference a quality in the created realm, but when used in reference to God goes far beyond it. Thomas is also careful to explain that words about God are likewise not equivocal. Words do not hold completely different meanings when referring to humans or to God. According to Thomas, “analogice, et non aequivoce pure neque pure univoce;” language is neither purely univocal since God is far greater in essence and being than the creation, nor purely equivocal, since meanings can be retained within the correct proportionality between Creator and creature. Thomas thus summarizes,” We must say, therefore, that words are used of God and creatures according to an analogy that is a certain proportion between them.” Communications of God in analogy, then, must be understood proportionally, “nomina dicuntur de Deo et creaturis secundum analogiam, id est proportionem” (the names of things are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense, that is, in proportion). This, in essence, is the analogia entis from the Thomistic tradition. See Aquinas, Summa Theoligica, Ia q. 13, aa. 56, McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader, 17.
. Przywara, Analogia Entis, 21314. The theological dialogue between Karl Barth, Erich Przywara and Urs Von Balthasar on the subject of analogia, while interesting and worthwhile, will not be fully addressed here. In his book, Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology, Brandon Gallaher traces out tensions in the God-world relation through Christologies of Barth, Przywara, and von Balthasar. Here he relates an understanding of analogy from the Fourth Lateran Council as a definitive declaration prescribed by Przywara. He says, “the idea of analogy Przywara has, with this subordination of the analogia entis to the Trinity, repeated and rehearses the movement of the Fourth Lateran Council, for it too explained the difference between the unity and perfection of the creatures and the unity and perfection of God.” This work speaks to a consensus of proportionality in terms of human language and God’s divine attributes.
. Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 23.
. Edwards, “Images or Shadows of Divine Things,” in Typological Writings, 3–146.
. Edwards, “Divine and Supernatural Light,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1730–1733, 424.
. Edwards, “Divine and Supernatural Light,” 424.
. Edwards, “Divine and Supernatural Light,” 424.