“Glory to God”: An Edwardsean Analysis of what it Means to Glorify God

The notion of glory is central to the Christian faith. Scripture speaks of God possessing glory, displaying glory, receiving glory, and sharing glory. Scripture also speaks of God being glorified. This essay builds upon Paul Silva and Brandon Szerlip’s ordinary language analysis of glory concepts to clarify what it means to glorify God. Silva and Szerlip define the act of glorifying something as ‘praising something as a result of either one’s high degree of respect for it or their high degree of admiration for it (or as a result of both).’ While this is a helpful initial characterization of the concept, I argue that their definition falls short of a robust theological account for two reasons. First, I argue that as a definition of human-toward-divine glorification it fails to account for the role of reverence that characterizes such an act. Second, I argue that by including the concept of “admiration” it fails to account for how a number of theologians—including Jonathan Edwards—consider the role of the reprobate in glorifying God in the eschaton. Finally, drawing upon Edwards’s account of human participation in divine glory I demonstrate how we might think of what it means to “give” God glory in light of classical theism in a manner that does not reduce to a mere acknowledgement account of glorification.