A Glorious Vision: The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Part 6)

The terms theology and beauty can seem like a bit of an odd pairing in many minds. They are more likely to be the odd couple of a television sitcom, than a legit synthesis. Theology would constantly be trying to keep things in order and beauty would just be enjoying the freedom of life lived in the moment. I can picture theology picking up half smoked cigars in disgust as beauty shrugs his shoulders and laughs. Despite the odd pairing, however, Jonathan Edwards saw the two concepts as very much appropriately connected. Beauty plays a central role in Edwards’ theology. Modern Christian appreciation of beauty can find great inspiration from Edwards’ aesthetic theology.

To talk about Edwards theology in any remotely comprehensive way one must address the subject of beauty. Edward Farley has said that “beauty is more central and more pervasive [in Edwards’ works] than in any other text in the history of Christian theology” (Faith and Beauty, 43). The connection point for Edwards was that God was himself beautiful and therefore reflections on God, or reflections on God’s world required an appropriate attention to aesthetics.

At the center of all of Edwards’ theology is God himself, and that remains true in his theological aesthetic. God is the only being truly beautiful. In his perfection God is true beauty, the very essence of it. God is the “foundation” for all beauty. But one of Edwards preferred ways to talk about God’s creative work is as God’s communication of himself. In creating the world God is diffusing his beauty. He is, thus, not only the “foundation” for all beauty, the standard by which it is all to be compared, but he is the “fountain” of all beauty. All the beauty in the world is poured forth from God himself. As Edwards says it, “All the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is…the reflection of the diffused beams of that being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory ” (True Virtue). Beauty is found everywhere because of its relation to the beauty of its creator. There is beauty to be found in harmonies, in nature, and most particularly in the gospel itself. The calling of the elect, the establishing the church, the growth of the believer is a unique display of beauty. The task of the believer is to discern this beauty around him.

The sensus suavitatis (sense of sweetness) has been discussed and dissected by many a more trained Edwards scholar than I. I won’t attempt to solve some of the dense and debated points of this subject. This sense is a distinctly Christian experience, according to Edwards. The sensus suavitatis should be understood as two distinct and yet interrelated aspects. It both opens up a new world to believers and heightens their understanding of the present natural world around them.

Following John Locke, Edwards saw the sensus suavitatis as an enlargement of our understanding of the natural world. Locke had redefined “revelation” as an enlarging of natural reason and Edwards utilized some of his philosophical developments to develop his own thinking on the enhancement of man’s natural reason post conversion. Man could not see all the beauty of the world around him without God first “opening his eyes” to see it. But post conversion he had his senses heightened so that he might more ably grapple with the glory of creation, which pointed him always back to the glory of his Creator.

Departing from Locke, however, Edwards seems also to have seen the sensus suavitatis as a sixth sense. It was not merely a heightening of the natural senses, it was the addition of a “new sense.” It is not merely an enlarging of the natural reason it is also the granting of a whole new experience. Michael McClymond writes:

Viewed in historical context, the spiritual sense is Edwards’s restatement, in the language of eighteenth century philosophy, of the Puritan conviction that the unregenerate are spiritually blind and that conversion is the opening of one’s eyes to God. (“Spiritual Perception in Jonathan Edwards”)

Edwards was not a Lockean, and here he is willing to part ways with the most influential philosopher of his age. McClymond makes a compelling case for the duality of Edwards’ view on this spiritual sense. I think Edwards’ duality is part of his overall desire to engage both heart and head.

Some may recall that for Edwards the proper task of the theologian, indeed of all believers, is not simply to know facts about God, but to delight in such facts. As Edwards contemplates the beauty of God it is not enough to simply know it, we must also delight in it. Edwards is keen to connect the spiritual sense to the intellect. He is not an existential philosopher whose theology is entirely disinterested in reason. Edwards himself says, “The heart cannot be set upon an object of which there is no idea in the understanding.” But this sense is not the same as Locke’s empiricism. To see God, wrote Edwards, “is to have an immediate, sensible, and certain understanding of God’s glorious excellency and love” (Divine Light). In one of his Miscellanies he adds, “For it is not only the mere presence of ideas in the mind, but it is the mind’s sense of their excellency.” The defining issue regarding this spiritual sense in Edwards thought is enjoyment. McClymond comments:

So intrinsic to spiritual perception is this delight or sweetness that one can say unequivocally that where there is no delight at all, there is no genuine perception of God or spiritual things. Whenever someone has a true spiritual sense, “the heart is sensible of pleasure or delight in the presence of the idea.” Thus the saint “does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.”

In this sense, then, Edwards believed that the spiritual sense was something belonging only to the regenerate, for the unregenerate can never enjoy God until they are given a new heart.

All of this should be understood as the foundation of Edwards aesthetic philosophy. The believer should see and sense and enjoy the beauty of the world around Him because it is a reflection of the essence of beauty in its Creator. Belden Lane has seen the application of this doctrine to believers in terms of ecological care specifically, and that is one particular, practical, and important application of it. But his summary of the doctrine opens up other avenues as well, particularly Christian participation in the arts. Lane writes:

For Jonathan Edwards, creation functions as a school of desire, training regenerate human beings in the intimate sensory apprehension of God’s glory mirrored in the beauty of the world. Humans are to respond, in turn, by articulating that glory, bringing it to full consciousness, and by replicating God’s own disposition to communicate beauty as they extend the act of beautifying to the world around them. (“Jonathan Edwards on Beauty, Desire, and the Sensory World”)

Lane believes this calls for Christians to consciously recognize that reality that the world around them is reflecting the beauty of God and it is our responsibility, then, to protect this reflection. That is a good and necessary reminder for many today. Another avenue this reality can drive us down, however, is a participation in the creation of beauty. As we sense the beauty of God mirrored in the world we respond by communicating that beauty through “beautifying the world.” This is a particularly worthy response as we consider the fact that we live in a fallen world, a world that desperately needs to be reminded of the beauty and glory of its original Creator.

A Christian participating in the arts, then, grounded in Edwards aesthetic theology, will both use his spiritual sense to understand the beauty of God in the world around him, and will apply it to communicating that beauty to others. This means that, according to Edwards, the regenerate have an unbelievable edge on the unregenerate in the arts. It, of course, doesn’t often seem like that because the Christian community is so busy ripping-off secular art and attempting to baptize it in some odd and deficient form of artistic expression. If, however, Edwards’ notion of the spiritual sense is right then believers engaged in the arts can actually make beautiful works of their own that communicate in unique and compelling ways a beauty that is, to a degree, hidden from the non-believer.

Who knew that Edwards could provide us a motivation to better Christian artistic expression. Apparently this Puritan pastor did know something about beauty and theology that many today have missed. The two concepts, as odd as it seems, belong together.