This dissertation is a theological analysis of the trinitarian shape of Jonathan Edwards' aesthetics of beauty. The contributions of this dissertation lie chiefly in three areas. The primary aim of this study is to advance the burgeoning field of the study of Jonathan Edwards by elucidating his views of beauty. In so doing, I present him as a rich source for the theological engagement of beauty, which could serve not only the field of Edwards studies, but also that of theological aesthetics more broadly.
Beauty is hard to describe, but easy to identify. It resides in expected and unexpected places in our world. Beauty is present in our world in a variety of forms. Yet while the average person might think about the reality of beauty from time to time, few people would think about the source of beauty. Where does beauty come from? Why is it here? Several hundred years ago Jonathan Edwards did some thinking of his own on this difficult subject. This volume explores his meditation on the subject and lays out a Christian framework for understanding and experiencing the beauty God has planted in His world. Edwards found in the study of beauty the person of God. Where Edwards saw beautiful images and acts, he saw a representation, a small picture, of a reality too great to comprehend, a God too majestic to adequately adore. He sets in motion a path of glory that begins with the Lord, moves to creation, continues to the incarnation of Christ, moves to the church, and ascends to the glory of heaven, where the Holy Trinity dwells. Easily accessible and readable, you do not need to be a scholar to enjoy these insights about Jonathan Edwards and his writings.
Scholars and laypersons alike regard Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) as North America's greatest theologian. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards is the most comprehensive survey of his theology yet produced and the first study to make full use of the recently-completed seventy-three-volume online edition of the Works of Jonathan Edwards. The book's forty-five chapters examine all major aspects of Edwards's thought and include in-depth discussions of the extensive secondary literature on Edwards as well as Edwards's own writings. Its opening chapters set out Edwards's historical and personal theological contexts. The next thirty chapters connect Edwards's theological loci in the temporally-ordered way in which he conceptualized the theological enterprise-beginning with the triune God in eternity with his angels to the history of redemption as an expression of God's inner reality ad extra, and then back to God in eschatological glory.The authors analyze such themes as aesthetics, metaphysics, typology, history of redemption, revival, and true virtue. They also take up such rarely-explored topics as Edwards's missiology, treatment of heaven and angels, sacramental thought, public theology, and views of non-Christian religions. Running throughout the volume are what the authors identify as five basic theological constituents: trinitarian communication, creaturely participation, necessitarian dispositionalism, divine priority, and harmonious constitutionalism. Later chapters trace his influence on and connections with later theologies and philosophies in America and Europe. The result is a multi-layered analysis that treats Edwards as a theologian for the twenty-first-century global Christian community, and a bridge between the Christian West and East, Protestantism and Catholicism, conservatism and liberalism, and charismatic and non-charismatic churches.
How do we know and speak about God's relation to this world? Does God reveal himself through his creation? This book recaptures a Christian vision of all reality: that the world is full of divine signs that are openings into God's glory. Bringing together insights from some of the tradition's greatest thinkers--Edwards, Newman, and Barth--Gerald McDermott resurrects a robust theology of creation for Protestants. He shows how and where meaning can be found outside the church and special revelation in various realms of creation, including nature, science, law, history, animals, sex, and sports.
Why is God's beauty often absent from our theology? Rarely do theologians take up the theme of God's beauty—even more rarely do they consider how God's beauty should shape the task of theology itself. But the psalmist says that the heart of the believer's desire is to behold the beauty of the Lord. In The Beauty of the Lord, Jonathan King restores aesthetics as not merely a valid lens for theological reflection, but an essential one. Jesus, our incarnate Redeemer, displays the Triune God's beauty in his actions and person, from creation to final consummation. How can and should theology better reflect this unveiled beauty? The Beauty of the Lord is a renewal of a truly aesthetic theology and a properly theological aesthetics.
Jonathan Edwards has been recognized as the most influential evangelical theologian of all time. Before his death at the age of fifty-four, he had sparked a new movement of Reformed evangelicals who played a major role in fueling the rise of modern missions, preaching revivals far and wide, and wielding the cutting edge of American theology. He has never gone out of print, and Christians today continue to flock to seminars and conferences on him. In this biography of the great preacher and teacher, historian Douglas Sweeney locates for us the core and key to Edwards' enduring impact. Sweeney finds that Edwards' profound and meticulous study of the Bible securely anchored his powerful preaching, his lively theological passions and his discerning pastoral work. Beyond introducing you to Edwards' life and times, this book will provide you with a model of Christian faith, thought and ministry.
Jonathan Edwards’ theologically sophisticated psychology of grace remains one of the deepest and most fertile theological psychologies in the Protestant tradition. The heart of his account lies in his foundational doctrine of spiritual perception where he locates the psychological core of the engraced Christian life. This work revisits Edwards’ doctrine from the perspective of recent work in the philosophy of emotions and other related philosophical sub-disciplines. The aim is to recover this often neglected theme in contemporary theology and renew it by bringing Edwards’ theological insights into conversation with various spheres of contemporary philosophical discussion. The account of spiritual perception that emerges from this interdisciplinary dialogue is one that seeks to revise, update and deepen Edwards’ own thinking on the matter in five major ways. The book concludes by arguing that the capacity for spiritual and emotional perception of the supreme good is grounded upon a wisdom-like seminal virtue centred upon the incarnate Christ (i.e., Christocentric wisdom). Such wisdom, on the renewed account, is considered the psychological core of transforming grace and the foundational basis upon which all other Christian virtues are formed.
This volume brings 'America's theologian' and one of the fastest growing forms of Christianity into dialogue. Edwards is a fruitful source for Pentecostal investigation for historical and theological reasons. Edwards and Pentecostals descend from a common historical tradition-North American Evangelicalism. From revivalism and religious/charismatic experience to pneumatology they also share common theological interests. Though sharing a common history and core theological concerns, no critical conversation between Pentecostals and Edwards and their fields of scholarship has occurred. This is the first volume that provides Pentecostal readings of Edwards' theology that contribute to Pentecostal theology and Edwards scholarship. The contributing essays offer examination of affections and the Spirit, God and Salvation, Church and culture; and mission and witness.
Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God aims to offer a retrieval of Edwards's theology of participation for contemporary evangelical theology. It critically expounds and elucidates the concept of participation in God, or theosis, in Edwards's Trinitarian theology as it relates to around three unions: the three persons of the Trinity, the hypostatic union of the divine and human in Christ, and that of believers with Christ. This volume brings Edwards's rich theological work into conversation with the patristic (Augustine and the Cappadocians) and Reformed traditions (Calvin and, especially, Barth), in order to construct with Edwards a more hopeful, liberating, and truly human version of Christian life. Consideration of the life of God in Edwards thus moves "beyond" in two senses: first, perspectives on participation beyond those of Edwards from Barth, Volf, the Cappadocian Fathers, and others in the tradition, are engaged in order to locate and critique and enhance it; and secondly, in the sense that, as Hastings argues, participation leads, for Edwards and others, into the "beyond" of the beatific vision--the glory of God, which is the hope that, amongst other things, motivates the Christian life.
The question of the afterlife is, for many today, one of preference. Christians trained to evangelize unsaved people with the query, “If you were to die today, do you know where you would go – heaven or hell?” have grown befuddled when met with the response, “I don’t believe in heaven or hell.” Something in our culture has changed. The ground has shifted beneath our feet. We did not feel it. But change has come, just the same. We must reacquaint modern Christians with the eschatologically driven preaching and teaching of Edwards. This word “eschatological” may trip some readers up at first encounter, but it refers simply to “last things”, things of eternity and ultimate significance. We exhume Edwards' scripturally fired material on the reality of the afterlife, the terror of hell, the glories of heaven, and the shape life must take in light of these realities. If we accept the Word as our authority, and if we will allow Edwards to serve as our faithful and imaginative guide, we will find that God is alive. He is Lord of heaven and earth, the sovereign ruler of all Creation. He is not small. He can be found. He is not silent on the afterlife, and His testimony calls for our attention, our concern, and our whole-hearted worship and trust. Easily accessible and readable, you do not need to be a scholar to enjoy these insights about Jonathan Edwards and his writings.