Website of Dr. John K. LaShell
Jonathan Edwards
(1703-1758)
|
Perhaps because his most famous
sermon was “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards
has often been misunderstood as a malicious, vindictive, pulpit-pounding,
revival preacher. Phyllis McGinley’s description of Edwards’ God
sums up this misunderstanding nicely:
Abraham’s God, the wrathful One,
Intolerant of error –
Not God the Father or the Son
But God the Holy Terror. [i]
A careful reading of Edwards’
works, however, reveals that the beauty of God was one of the fundamental ideas
in his theology. Not only that, but his private “Personal
Narrative” reveals that Edwards experienced a passionate delight in
meditating on the beauty of God. I thank God for the course Dr. Sam Logan, Jr.
taught on Jonathan Edwards at Westminster Seminary, for Edwards introduced me
to the beauty of God.
Quotations from Jonathan Edwards
God is beautiful
“The glorious excellencies and
beauty of God will be what will for ever entertain the minds of the saints, and
the love of God will be their everlasting feast.” [ii]
“For as God is infinitely the
greatest Being, so he is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and
excellent; and all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation, is but
the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fulness
of brightness and glory.” [iii]
Beauty is a kind of consent
or harmony
[Beauty is] a mutual consent and
agreement of different things, in form, manner, quantity and visible end or
design; called by the various names of regularity, order, uniformity, symmetry,
proportion, harmony, &c. . . . [iv]
“ONE alone, without
any reference to any more, cannot be excellent; for in such case there can be
no manner of relation no way, and therefore no such thing as Consent. Indeed
what we call One, may be excellent because of a consent of parts, or some
consent of those in that being, that are distinguished into a plurality in some
way or other. But in a being that is absolutely without any plurality, there
cannot be Excellency, for there can be no such thing as consent or
agreement.” [v]
Love is the highest kind of
beauty
“The reason, or at least one
reason, why God has made this kind of mutual agreement of things beautiful and
grateful to those intelligent beings that perceive it, probably is, that there
is in it some image of the true, spiritual, original beauty, which has been
spoken of; consisting in being’s consent to being, or the union of
spiritual beings in a mutual propensity and affection of heart. . . . And so
[God] has constituted the external world in analogy to the spiritual world in
numberless instances. . . . [He] makes an agreement of different things, in
their form, manner, measure, &c. to appear beautiful, because here is some
image of an higher kind of agreement and consent of spiritual beings.” [vi]
“When we spake
of Excellence in Bodies, we were obliged to borrow the word Consent, from
Spiritual things; but Excellence in and among Spirits is, in its prime and
proper sense, Being’s consent to Being. There is no other proper consent but
that of Minds, even of their Will; which, when it is of Minds towards Minds, it
is Love, and when of Minds towards other things, it is Choice. Wherefore all
the Primary and Original beauty or excellence, that is among Minds, is
Love.”
[vii]
God is beautiful because He
is a Trinity
“As to
God’s Excellence, it is evident it consists in the Love of himself; for
he was as excellent before he created the Universe, as he is now. But if the
Excellence of Spirits consists in their disposition and action, God could be
excellent no other way at that time; for all the exertions of himself were
towards himself. But he exerts himself towards himself, no other way, than in
infinitely loving and delighting in himself; in the mutual love of the Father
and the Son. This makes the Third, the Personal Holy Spirit, or the Holiness of
God, which is his infinite Beauty; and this is God’s Infinite Consent to
Being in general. And his love to the creature is his excellence, or the communication
of himself, his complacency in them, according as they partake of more or less
of Excellence and beauty, that is, of holiness (which consists in love); that
is, according as he communicates more or less of his Holy Spirit.” [viii]
Edwards’ personal sense
of God’s beauty
Although Jonathan
Edwards has been recognized as one of America’s most brilliant
philosophers, he was not an emotionally barren intellectual. A narrative of his
personal religious experience, which was intended only for his own use, was
found among his papers after his death. The following extract comes from that
document.
“The
first instance that I remember of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and
divine things that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, I
Tim. i.17. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise
God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as
it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new
sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any
words of scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how
excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that
God, and be rapt up to him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him for
ever! I kept saying, and as it were singing, over these words of scripture to
myself; and went to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a manner
quite different from what I used to do, with a new sort of affection. But it
never came into my thought, that there was any thing spiritual, or of a saving
nature in this.
“From
about that time I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of
Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him.
An inward, sweet sense of these things, at times, came into my heart; and my
soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was
greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on the
beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation by free
grace in him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of
these subjects. Those words Cant. ii.1, used to be abundantly with me, I am
the Rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. The words seemed to me
sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ. The whole book
of Canticles used to be pleasant to me, and I used to be much in reading it,
about that time; and found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that would
carry me away, in my contemplations. This I know not how to express otherwise,
than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world;
and sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone
in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly
conversing with Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of
divine things, would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning
in my heart, an ardor of soul, that I know not how to express.” [ix]
[i] Quoted in Conrad Cherry, The
Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (reprint edition Gloucester,
MA: Peter Smith, 1974), 1.
[ii]
Jonathan Edwards, “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence” in The
Works of Jonathan Edwards, with a memoir by Sereno E. Dwight, edited by
Edward Hickman, 2 vols. (Reprint edition, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust,
1979), 1.5.
[iii] True Virtue,
chapter 2, in Works 1.125.
[iv] True Virtue, chapter 3, in Works
1.127. Edwards’ definition of beauty is unremarkable. Many philosophers
of an earlier time and most ordinary people of all times would probably agree
with him. Philosophers infected with diseases such as linguistic analysis,
existentialism, and post-modernism seem largely to have given up trying to find
a universal definition of beauty.
[v]
“The Mind,” entry 1, Works, 1.ccxxix.
[vi] True
Virtue, chapter 3, in Works, 1.128.
[vii]
“The Mind,” entry 45, Works, 1.ccxxxi.
[viii]
“The Mind,” entry 45, Works, 1.ccxxxi.
[ix] Works, 1.xiii.