Despite an absence of terminology for deification, in Jonathan Edwards’ writings, the Patristic doctrine of deification framed many aspects of his theology. Five key themes can be identified in his theology that show his engagement with the doctrine was based in Scriptural Tradition: the Christian’s participation in the divine nature; Christ’s descent and ascent; the Patristic idea of ‘recapitulation’; the Christian’s union with God/Christ; and the progression of the Christian soul in eternity. The doctrine functioned in Edwards’ soteriological anthropology to allow eschatology to inform on issues to do with Christian ethics and morality in the Christian’s present life. His adaptation of the doctrine enabled him to account for both the spiritual and earthly concerns of the Christian life bringing together the transcendent and immanent qualities of the work of grace in a way that is not antithetical to, or incompatible with, the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith. One result is that Christian issues to do with ethics and morality become a theocentric concern, not an anthropocentric one, which for Edwards allowed him to demarcate Christian moral theory from eighteenth century secular and philosophical moral theory. This can be seen to be the reason why the doctrine appealed to him in his eighteenth-century Enlightenment context. He perceived the ever-growing rationalism in Reformed Protestant thinking, which had imposed a dichotomy between knowledge and reason, and experience and practice, to be a false one- a tension that remains and continues to impact modern theological thinking today.
This paper examines the complex relationship between Friedrich Schleiermacher and Sabellius. At the end of the first edition of The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher argued that Christian doctrines of the Trinity have been inherently subordinationst and that, as a result, “the true method of representing the doctrine of the Trinity has not yet been hit upon or achieved in the common Symbols.” The first step towards better doctrine, Scheleiermacher argued, was to ask “whether, in order to escape the so-called Sabellian heresy, too much had not been done by the opposing party,” such that “a twofold nature was assumed in the Godhead itself.” Shortly thereafter, Scheleiermacher explored this question directly in an essay, published in English translation as “On the Discrepancy between the Sabellian and Athanasian Method of Representing the Doctrine of the Trinity.” His findings then worked his way into his final, and now standard, edition of The Christian Faith.
Today some still accuse Schleiermacher of being a Sabellian. That designation, however, assumes an understanding of what Sabellianism is. The paper first shows that Schleiermacher’s understanding of Sabellianism – which remained the standard interpretation through much of the nineteenth century – differs significantly from what most people today would classify as Sabellianism. Still, even assuming Schleiermacher’s definition, the paper shows that while Schleiermacher found Sabellius’s doctrine alluring, ultimately the methodological restrictions basic to his own theological system kept him from following it.
It has been noted that Thomas F. Torrance read and interpreted the Holy Fathers not as a patristic scholar, but as a systematic theologian. Furthermore, the point is made that we ought not to blame him for making occasional interpretations of the patristic texts that cannot be supported by strict textual evidence because his goal was never to engage in the historical endeavor but the systematic one. I argue that ‘systematic reading’ cannot be an excuse for arbitrary interpretations of the patristic texts and that every systematic reading must be firmly grounded in the historical explorations of the texts. I examine three cases in which Torrance’s reading of the patristic texts cannot be supported by patristic scholarship: natural theology of St Athanasius, St Clement’s ‘kataphysic method’ and the concept of contingency in the Alexandrian theology. I conclude by suggesting what might constitute the difference between the two approaches to patristic theology and the way the relation between the two might be developed.