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Scripture focus
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature.
2 Peter 1:4 KJV
At a glance
Does Edwards's theology of union with God amount to the Orthodox doctrine of divinization?
It comes close enough that serious scholars debate it, but Edwards always kept a Creator-creature distinction that pure pantheism or full theosis would blur.
Summary of the chapter
Certain strands of Edwards's thought sit uneasily inside ordinary Calvinism. Jaroslav Pelikan, a historian of doctrine who converted late in life to Eastern Orthodoxy, noticed real affinities between Edwards and the Orthodox teaching that redeemed humanity comes to share, by grace, in God's own life. Charles Hodge went further, charging that Edwards's Original Sin made God 'the only substance in the universe' — in effect, pantheism. Religious Affections had already supplied the provocative images: believers as light shining forth, water flowing from a fountain, a branch drawing sap from the vine.
Edwards's 1738 treatise on justification opened with an impeccably Protestant thesis — justification by faith alone, not by any virtue of our own. Yet Thomas Schafer noticed that Edwards grounded this justification in the soul's actual union with God, so that faith mattered chiefly as 'the very act' by which that union occurs. Anri Morimoto argued that a genuinely 'Catholic concern' — that grace produces a real, abiding change in human nature — runs alongside Edwards's Protestant insistence on total dependence, without displacing it.
A.N. Williams's criteria sharpen the question: true theosis requires humanity's incorporation into God, not merely God's indwelling of humanity, and it must be the destiny of all the redeemed rather than a rare mystical extra. Edwards's repeated citation of 2 Peter 1:4 — that believers 'might be partakers of the divine nature' — shows he took such participation with full theological seriousness, even while resisting any suggestion that creatures share God's very essence.
Key points
- Scholars such as Jaroslav Pelikan have noted genuine affinities between Edwards's theology and the Orthodox doctrine that redeemed humanity comes to share, by grace, in God's own life.
- Charles Hodge charged that Edwards's Original Sin, by locating being itself in God, tipped into pantheism.
- Edwards used organic images — light, fountain, branch and sap — to describe believers' relation to God, images easily misread apart from his careful qualifications.
- Edwards's earliest published sermon, 'God Glorified in Man's Dependence,' already combined total dependence on God with the claim that saints are 'made partakers of God's holiness.'
- A.N. Williams's criteria for true theosis — humanity's incorporation into God, not merely God's indwelling of humanity — provide a test for how far Edwards's language actually goes.
A line worth remembering
We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue or goodness of our own.
McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 26
Related Scripture
- John 17:21-23
- Colossians 2:9-10
- 1 John 3:2
- Ephesians 3:19
For reflection and discussion
- What is the difference between saying believers 'partake of the divine nature' and saying they become identical with God?
- Why might organic images like light, water, and branches be theologically risky even when they are biblically rooted?
- Does locating salvation in real union with God enrich or endanger the Reformation's emphasis on grace alone?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 26, “The Theme of Divinization” — in The Theology of Jonathan Edwards by Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott (Oxford University Press, 2012).