Jonathan Edwards On Beauty

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.

In his devotional pursuit, Edwards found rich and perpetual food for his soul. This book captures his writings on the beauty of God, creation, Christ, the church and the trinitarian afterlife. In doing so, Strachan and Sweeney draw out a Christian framework for understanding and experiencing the beauty God has planted in His world.

This illuminating analysis of Jonathan Edwards' philosophical-theological-ethical program focuses on his concept of beauty as our central clue to the nature of reality and the life of God. Delattre shows that beauty not only provides Edwards with a model for the manner of divine governance but operates throughout his thought as both the goal and means of redemption. Essential to his understanding of the operation of beauty as the law of moral order is Edwards' aesthetic/affectional model of the self, which corresponds to his aesthetic articulation of the system of being and good. Thus the distinguishing mark of Edwards' theology--his elevation to centrality of both the primary beauty of being's cordial consent to being and the secondary beauty of harmony and proportion--is shown to be the key to his interpretation of the dynamics of the moral and spiritual life.

Jonathan Edwards is widely hailed as the greatest theologian in American history. In Edwards on the Christian Life, Dane Ortlund invites us to explore the great eighteenth-century pastor’s central passion: God’s resplendent beauty. Whether reflecting on the nature of love, the preeminence of Scripture, or the glory of the natural world, the concept of beauty stood at the heart of Edwards’s theology and permeated his portrait of the Christian life. Clear and engaging, this accessible volume will inspire you to embrace Edwards’s magnificent vision of what it means to be a Christian: enjoying and reflecting of the beauty of God in all things. Part of the Theologians on the Christian Life series.

Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty relates Edwards' idea of beauty to his understanding of the psychology of religious experience. In his vocabulary of the language of beauty Edwards articulates a traditional understanding of beauty in the various relations that constitute primary and secondary beauty. All beauty, however, is ultimately founded on the beauty of God's Trinitarian being. Edwards' concept of the "sense of the heart," related to his psychology of religious experience, is articulated as an infusion of God's beauty. This experience results in a new perception and manifestation of holiness and beauty in the lives of the saints, both individually and corporately. True believers are to be "proportioned Christians," showing forth beauty in their affections. Edwards explicated this perspective in sermons, treatises--especially Religious Affections--and in a number of cases he presented, including the religious experiences of David Brainerd, Sarah Edwards, and his own awakening and conversion. In these cases, the language of beauty plays a prominent descriptive role. In summary, Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty shows the importance of Edwards' idea of beauty for his understanding of genuine religious experience. Edwards defines true or genuine religion as an experience of God's beauty that becomes manifested in the beauty of the affections. Further, in articulating that understanding, he utilized the vocabulary of his language of beauty. For Jonathan Edwards, beauty is the structure of genuine religious experience.

The author argues that Edwards was very much a figure of the Enlightenment, but was able to use Enlightenment thought in his theology without yielding to its mechanistic and individualistic tendencies.

This title is an introduction to Jonathan Edwards (1703-58). It looks at subjects which Edwards considered vitally important such as revival, Bible, typology, aesthetics, literature and preaching, philosophy and world religions.