Jonathan Edwards On The Experience Of Beauty

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.

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.

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.

This compilation of reader response to Jonathan Edwards, spanning 276 years, includes a reprint of two earlier works ? Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide (1981) and Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography (1994) ? and the publication of a third, a gathering of commentary from 1994 to 2005. Nearly 140 essays have been added to the first and second works, while the last new gathering ? which includes a celebration of the tercentenary of Edwards??'s birth ? adds another 700 to the whole. The text preserves the pattern of arranging items alphabetically within a given year and of recording cross-references. Essays in a collection are annotated serially rather than alphabetically. Each of the three sections is self-contained with an introduction and annotated bibliography of its own. Adding to the immense value of this work to Edwards scholars are the chronology of Edwards??'s works, listed by date and by short and long title, which precedes the entire work, and the three comprehensive indexes ? of authors and titles, of subjects, and additions to the previous volumes.

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.