Quite straightforwardly, John J. Bombaro's Jonathan Edwards's Vision of Reality: The Relationship of God to the World, Redemption History, and the Reprobate (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012) is a great good, and with no further ado I will tell you why I think that.
A Brief Synopsis
Chapters 8 and 9 expound on Edwards theological anthropology and how humans are created to be an image of the Trinity. The chapters also correct Stephen H. Holmes' and Michael McClymond's unnecessary conclusion according to which the reprobate, since they have totally lost God's principles of holiness and righteousness, are therefore dehumanized. They do not consider that there is a distinction between natural and supernatural principles or dispositions (which can be equated to Edwards' distinction between God's natural and spiritual image in man). Edwards maintains that man's natural principles (understanding, will, consciousness, etc.) are what defines humanity, and they have not been lost with the fall (although they have been affected). Man's supernatural principles, however, are not essential but accidental in man (here Edwards' doctrine of self-love comes in), and that is what fallen man has lost entirely. What more interests Edwards, however, is true beauty, and that can be possible only in participation with the Triune God.
Chapters 10 and 11 are, in my opinion, masterful. They further show how Holmes and McClymond err regarding Edwards' anthropology, against the background of a correct view of Edwards' doctrine of man. Moreover, these chapters try to offer a coherent exposition of Edwards' view of the fall of Adam into sin. Such an account has been often criticized in the literature, but John shows its reasonableness, at least within the context of Edwards' God-centered metaphysics. Chapter 11 also offers some important epistemological considerations regarding what unregenerate and regenerate may perceive about spiritual and natural matters, both in this life and in the afterlife.
Chapters 12 and 13 present Edwards' view of salvation (both individual salvation and corporative, from individual regeneration to final glorification), together with Edwards' God-centered view of history against the man-centredness of the Enlightenment. These Chapters also refutes Gerald McDermott's and Anri Morimoto's revisionist and universalist readings of Edwards, readings which John rightly says: "Justified talk of Edwards's potential soteriological inclusivism is simply fiction" (p. 24).
The Conclusion lists and discusses the attractiveness and unattractiveness of Edwards' philosophical theology for modern readers. Interestingly enough, for someone like me who is sympathetic to Edwards' view of reality, I find his "unattractiveness" quite attractive. Finally, Appendix A shows the radical differences between Edwards and process theology. Desperate attempts to place Edwards near to process theology are still ongoing (see here, for example), and, by their very nature, they cannot but be characterized by a deep lack of textual evidence coupled with a selectively truncated presentation of Edwards' thought. Appendix B discusses Edwards' view of sufficient and efficacious grace in relation to the pre- and post-lapsarian man.
Christ: The Beginning and the End
The book is heartwarmingly Christological. As a Lutheran scholar and minister, John undoubtedly knows the centrality of the Logos incarnate for Christian wisdom and worldview. Edwards-the-Calvinist' overall theocentric emphases can sometimes lead to believe that he did not give a prominent place to Christ, a conclusion which would be mistaken. For example, see the commentary to Edwards' account of his "new sense" conversion.
"From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him ... Not long after I first began to experience these things ... I was walking there, and looked up on the sky and clouds; there came into my mind, a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness. After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered: there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything." ~ WJEO 16:793-794.
John comments as follows. I like how he succinctly touches theology, soteriology, epistemology, and ontology in a few lines.
"Christ and redemption are mentioned first because of their relation to special revelation and God's 'end of creation' summarily being accomplished in and through the Son of God. In the Bible God said He would ultimately glorify Himself in the person and work of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Thus, God's 'end of creation' is the glorification of Himself through the perfect idea or image of Himself, viz. the Son crucified and resurrected. A 'new kind of apprehension of Christ,' therefore, is not categorically different than apprehending God as God. The connection between content, mode, and sensibility of perception first converge on the spiritual sense as the facilitator of right thoughts and affections about God through Christ, or, similarly, God as Savior. Here Edwards' philosophical epistemology and soteriology merge together. Thus, when he writes, 'The first that I remember that ever I found anything of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words [from 1 Tim. 1: 17],' we find that these words are the climactic conclusion to a sixteen-verse celebratory discourse on the gospel of Christ. The 'vision' of God as God is mediated by the Spirit as a 'vision' of God through the Christ presented in the pages of the New Testament as the eternal Logos (Divine Word) incarnated. Edwards' theocentrism, we learn, is never without an element of logocentricity: the Word inscripturated serves as the means by which God converts the soul." ~ P. 54.
By Full of Eyes (Chris Powers).
For other places where John highlights the centrality of Christ in Edwards' system, see also pp. 39, 130-131, 119-120, 252, 274-275.
A disagreement
John claims that according to Edwards, there are irregularities in God's being which are expressed through the reprobate; for example: "God's being possessing a disconcertingly high degree of 'irregularities'" (p. 232). Considering the existence and destiny of the reprobate, according to John there "needs to be an account of the reprobate themselves in relation to God’s prior and necessary dispositions" (quoted from an email exchange). This is because "given Edwards’ view of the end for which God created the world, there are dispositions within God that externalize or make manifest His excellencies. But for this to be consistent with Edwards’ ontology for maximal excellency, an account of the reprobate factor into the dispositional impulses of God" (Ibid.).
I am not convinced that what John claims follows from his own account of Edwards' view of God's dispositional nature. These are some considerations.
Firstly, on p. 174, note 124, John mentions Misc. 950 and 1032 in support of that claim. However, I do not see anywhere Edwards saying what John claims in his book. Moreover, it is one thing to say that there are deformities and irregularities "within God's beautiful matrix" (p. 174, emphasis added), while it is a radically different thing to say that "God's being possessing a disconcertingly high degree of 'irregularities'" (p. 232). John admits that Edwards does not use the terms "irregularities" and "deformities" and that they are never applied to God in Edwards' works. The claim, however, logically follows from Edwards' account of God's communicative nature, according to John. To which I answer with my second point.
Secondly, John himself grants that, for Edwards, human nature is defined according to its natural faculties, and the supernatural faculties are accidental. Therefore, reprobate, both in this life and in hell in the life to come, are and will always be humans. Their existence, therefore, still reflects God's natural attributes (understanding and will). This is their dispositional ontological ground and origin. But what about their eternal condemnation? If the saints' participation in divine glory reflect the perfect communion of the man Jesus Christ with the Logos who indwells him by the Holy Spirit, and, in turn, the perfect blessedness of the Trinity, how do we account for the eternal damnation of the reprobate in the light of divine dispositionalism?
I do not believe that positing "irregularities" and "deformities" in God's being is necessary to answer that question. As a start, they are not a necessary condition in Edwards' ontological principle according to which the greater the excellency, the greater the complexity ("complexity" is not necessarily a pejorative or negative terms, while "irregularities" and "deformities" are). Furthermore, the reprobate's eternal experience of God's wrath can be accounted for with God's absolute opposition to what is not Himself and to what does not participate in Him through Christ in the Love that is the Holy Spirit. The "irregularities and "deformities" are the reprobates (and the fallen angels, of course, who also are moral, rational beings), so such irregularities and deformities can be placed in God's created matrix, but there is no need to track them back as belonging to God's being. The reprobate existence is the created manifestation of God's disposition of hatred of sin and evil, which is no irregularity of deformity but simply a negative consequence of God's holiness. The irregularity in the disposition's manifestation does not entail irregularity in the disposition itself or in the Disposer. For instance, an unprotected skin burned by the sun argues for no irregularity in the sun but rather in the skin which had no sunscreen (as God's righteousness and the Holy Spirit are not essential to human nature, so the sunscreen is not essential to the human skin). The dispositional account of human nature of the reprobate is maintained, and their hatred for God does not need to be accounted for through "irregularities" in God, because that hatred is "simply" the non-essential expression of a created understanding and will which, although imaging God in the possession of these (essential) faculties, still is deprived of the (accidental) Holy Spirit and, therefore, goes in the opposite direction of true love.
The necessity of an alternative to John's conclusion appears even further if we consider that "irregularities" and "deformities" are relative terms, that is, they need a third term. Irregular and deform with respect to what? To other things, attributes, dispositions in God which are "regular" and "formed"? That would exponentially (and unnecessarily) complicate the picture of Edwards' dispositional view of God, and I doubt that that is what Edwards' system entails with "complexity."
I am sure my alternative needs to be refined significantly. However, John seems to make a jump from God's dispositionality to God's being and nature which, in my view, is not required by Edwards' own account.
I hope I have not misrepresented John's position (if so, that was certainly not intentional). Anyway, do not take my word for it, since John has my email and I look forward for his rejoinder.
Conclusions
Besides the disagreement I just discussed, Jonathan Edwards' Vision of Reality is a great achievement. John has offered a comprehensive exposition of Edwards' titanic view of all things, a harmonious and coherent symphony where theology and philosophy, natural and special revelation, speculation and spirituality work together to shows Edwards' captivating view of the comprehensiveness of the Triune God.
John lets Edwards speaks of himself. He carefully considers Edwards' historical and intellectual context and reads any Edwardsean argument and proposition in light of Edwards' general system. By doing so, and through careful and comprehensive use of the texts, John has been able to shed light also on issues of Edwards' thought that, although certainly problematic, are too often exaggeratedly considered as unacceptable. Jonathan Edwards' Vision of Reality is a demanding and challenging read, and perhaps it is not suited for the beginners. However, for intermediates and higher, it is required reading.
©
My gratitude to Pickwick Publications for providing me with a review copy.
