For those wishing to understand my previous comment concerning Jonathan Edwards' Occasionalism & the denial of Trinitarian Concursus, I offer some articulations & how it results in such a tragic view of God's grace, joy & the "evaporation" of anxiety. (see pic) 
Oliver Crisp describes Edwards in this way: “In early modern theology the question of divine causation loomed large in light of Newton’s mechanical philosophy and the pantheism of writers like Spinoza....
"Some fended off these worries with occasionalism, claiming that human actions were merely occasions of divine action. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) took occasionalism to be a correlate of his uncompromising doctrine of divine sovereignty...
ultimately making God the moral and causal explanation of all events—even those that are evil.”
How this relates to our embodiedness and how anxiety and depression are ministered to is directly a result of how we view God’s relationship to our humanity and secondary causation.
How this relates to our embodiedness and how anxiety and depression are ministered to is directly a result of how we view God’s relationship to our humanity and secondary causation.
The Stanford Encyc. Of Phil: “Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian. His work as a whole is an expression of two themes — the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God's holiness...
"The first is articulated in Edwards' defense of theological determinism, in a doctrine of occasionalism, and in his insistence that physical objects are only collections of sensible “ideas” while finite minds are mere assemblages of “thoughts” or “perceptions.” ...
"As the only real cause or substance underlying physical and mental phenomena, God is “being in general,” the “sum of all being.””
I hope in reading these standard summaries we see the deep connection to John Piper’s ministry and the brand of Calvinism that has become so mainstream in Reformed/Reformed Baptist circles.
This occasionalism has a direct result on one’s view of God’s causal relationship to the world and therefore how Grace influences and undergirds nature.
If one studies how the body and mind work with this conception of Occasionalism, the body is severely undermined and thought/perceptions are preeminent. Our actions are merely the direct and immediate occasions for God’s actions.
This directly undermined the pan-catholic and Protestant view of causation held at the time that God works both immediately and mediately, in, with, and under secondary moral agents and causes.
God does not violate the human will and act immediately upon us in sanctification specifically but works to restore human nature by the Spirit in the mediation of the Son according to the will of the Father.
The robust Trinitarian nature of Sanctification does not undermine our human wills, thoughts, affections, emotions, or embodiedness. In fact, it upholds it and perfects it, sweetly bringing our wills and lives into conformity with Christ’s by the Spirit.
J. E.’s views of the Trinity, his view of causation, and embodiedness have a direct impact on the nature of sanctification espoused by Piper here and elsewhere. The pan-Protestant and Reformed view of nature is denied.
Stanford Encyclopedia goes on in describing J.E.’s “material phenomenalism”: Edwards also thought that “nothing has existence any where else…but either in created or uncreated consciousness.” It follows that “the material universe exists only in the mind;” ...
“the existence of all corporeal things is only ideas” (“Of Being,” “The Mind,” no. 51, and “Miscellanies,” no. 179; Edwards 1957, vol. 6, 204, 368, and vol. 13, 327).
As one can imagine, this view of nature, embodiedness, and causation can wreak havoc on our view of sanctification. All we need to do is really ponder the holiness and beauty of God and our problems will evaporate, spontaneously and immediately.
But this view of JE actually undermines what real joy and healing are.
This is contrary to Reformed theology’s view of causation, modality, nature, existence, creation, God, good and evil, etc. (not to mention divine simplicity).
JE's view directly affects/undermines the liturgical nature of our embodiedness and how the body stores sin, trauma, anxiety, and depression. Our bodies process trauma in very distinct ways that run with the grain of our natures and how God created them to heal and process.
Modern-day psychology and philosophy speak to the complicated way our embodiedness affects our minds and vice versa. Reformed theology at its best does not undermine the complicated ways in which we get healing and grow in sanctification.
In fact, it undergirds our enterprise in discovering how historical, particular, embodied, liturgical – dare I say covenantal – our lives are. We are embedded in our stories and histories and bodies through and through.
Sanctification and healing are not merely a matter of believing the Gospel more/hard enough. We will not simply combust into Good Works or joy. We will live w/ the messy tension of unresolved grief and trauma, belief in the Gospel and doubt, joy and sadness, anxiety and peace.
God works in, with, and under our humanity and embodiedness by the Spirit. All the while, keeping our wills and humanity intact. The incarnation perfectly pictures how God does this and how he is making us into his living temple as the body of Christ.
The lack of metaphysics and appreciation of modern-day psychology in the Reformed world has led to devastating and DEADLY applications of the Gospel in our day in the Reformed Baptist world all the way to the confessional, TR world.
Taking specific passages from the NT outside of their canonical, covenantal context can lead to an extremely skewed view of the Christian life. One can look merely at the Psalms and how God wants us to process our emotions, sins, and traumas before him and others.
All of these important passages are deep in the context of Israel’s liturgical life and God used all of these things to bring healing to his people in a communal, embodied context. Jesus’ worship consisted of the Psalms. Paul sang them in prison
We cannot read Paul's letters outside the liturgical history of Israel and the covenantal context of God becoming man. The Bible is so rich and so vast – it offers a primal and real intertextual canon that speaks to every aspect of what it means to be human.
We do great injustice to our communities of faith, especially those with mental illness, trauma, addiction, etc (all of us!) when we overlook and elide the emotional processing and recovery that is necessary for our lives as well as the medical necessities of many conditions.
God is working in, with, and through our lives. He is working through our humanity and embodiedness. He is working to redeem our woundedness. God cannot erase the traumas that have occurred to us because they are embedded in our bodies and in the fabric of our minds.
What God does do is cause us to remember them differently. What he does do is cause us to process them and calls us to do that in safe places of love and hospitality. He does not ask us to have our anxieties evaporate or be forgotten.
No, we worship a savior in heaven who is forever the “Lamb that Was Slain.” God works in and through our woundedness to show he is there. He is here to be with us in our vulnerability and openness. And one day he will bring complete Justice in ways we can never hope or imagine.
I hope this hodgepodge answer brings some clarity to the conversation. There is way more that can be said about the Trinitarian nature of causality and metaphysics in general and the necessity for counseling, therapy, medicine – many things I am not an expert in that we need!
We are embodied, covenantal, structural beings that must have a whole life approach to healing and discipleship if we are to love the whole man and reach them with the Gospel of Grace that redeems the whole image of God in him.
https://twitter.com/word_water_wine/status/1301577096771309568
We need to process our woundedness and trauma. It will not evaporate into the ether by believing facts about the Gospel:
https://twitter.com/word_water_wine/status/1296090254747865088
***I must add to this that I do not think most people following this view of JE are doing so with a focal awareness that they are adopting this metaphysic. Modernity is inherently Gnosticizing and when combined w/ Calvinism it easily leads to this functional praxis****
**The liturgical, imperialistic shape of modernity embeds/forms us into realties and modes of being in the world that we are scarcely cognizant of.**
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