The Full Brightness And Diffused Beams Of Glory: Jonathan Edwards’s Concept Of Beauty And Its Relevance For Apologetics

By David Vanbrugge

Beauty is often assumed to be a subjective, personal, and cultural phenomenon. In some peoples’ minds, the word beauty is primarily attached to parlors and contests and sleep. However, through periods of church history, beauty was primarily a theological and ethical concept. [1] In order to properly understand why beauty should matter to church members and pastors, it is necessary to learn from other pastors who were concerned with the concept.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the last Puritan, was fascinated with the idea and implications of beauty. [2] This has stirred up much discussion. Some authors, such as Perry Miller and Michael McClymond, consider Edwards’s conception of beauty to be Neo-Platonic and overly influenced by John Locke. [3] Norman Fiering argues that Edwards’s aesthetic was influenced particularly by Lord Shaftesbury. [4] Roland Delattre contends that it was doctrinal and scriptural, though it might best be described as both philosophical and theological at once. [5]

Nevertheless, the practical applications of Edwards’s concept of beauty seem to have been neglected by conservative Protestant scholars. In recent scholarship, Edwards’s concept of beauty has been related to his understanding of the psychology of religious experience. [6] But as this paper will make evident, Edwards’s language concerning beauty, and particularly how he places it in relation to God as well as nature, also brings out practical implications for pastors and Christian apologists.

The Language Of Beauty

When defining and describing complex theological ideas, the language involved is rarely clear or simple. This is particularly true of Edwards’s language concerning beauty. However, a careful consideration of Edwards’s own descriptions and distinctions makes his concept of beauty somewhat easier to understand.

To begin, it is necessary to realize that Edwards, following acceptable practice within philosophical and Puritan writing, equated beauty with other words, including excellency and virtue. On one hand, excellency to Edwards is a broader term encompassing beauty, holiness, and greatness. [7] On the other hand, beauty can also be used as a synonym for excellency: “Excellence, to put it in other words, is that which is beautiful and lovely.” [8] Edwards himself wrote that “there is nothing [that has] been more without definition than excellency.” [9]

Second, it helps to understand that Edwards pursued the ideal and ultimate understanding of beauty. While he agreed in “The Mind” that understanding beauty as proportionality was acceptable, he wanted to know why. [10] In the end, Edwards believed that the reason there is any ultimate beauty is resolved in ontological being. “Beauty is the first principle of being, not the reverse.” [11] Then, “by virtue of beauty, being is; according to its measure of beauty, any particular thing or event has being and remains in being.” [12] As the perfection of being, beauty “provides the primary model of order in terms of which Edwards attempts to understand all forms of order and disorder, concord and discord, in the whole system of being under God.” [13] It is difficult to overstate how significant beauty was for Edwards. [14]

To Edwards, the ontology of God and man is aesthetically defined. [15] That is one reason why he uses virtue, beauty, and excellence (in their moral sense) interchangeably. [16]

God has sufficiently exhibited himself, in his being, his infinite greatness and excellency: and has given us faculties, whereby we are capable of plainly discovering immense superiority to all other beings in these respects…. And all true virtue must radically and essentially, and as it were summarily, consist in this. Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty… and whose being and beauty is as it were the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence. [17]

Third, Edwards differentiated between primary and secondary beauty. Primary beauty is spiritual beauty that “lies in virtuous principles and acts…that imply consent and union with Being in general. This is the primary and most essential beauty of everything that can justly be called by the name of virtue, or is any moral excellency in the eye of one that has a perfect view of things.” [18] It is manifest as goodness, value, consent, benevolence, love, and perfection of being. [19] Secondary beauty is inferior, and can be found in both spiritual and inanimate things. It “consists in 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, etc.” [20] This agreement can appear in colors, dimensions, patterns, the proportions of a human body, and the arrangement of notes in a tune. [21] It must be highlighted that, to Edwards, this is not subjective but “a law of nature, which God has fixed, or an instinct he has given to mankind.” [22] The difference between primary and secondary beauty is not that the one is spiritual and the other material, but is “with the nature of the consenting relationship involved.” [23] Primary beauty then is union or consent with the source of beauty and being; secondary beauty is agreement or consent with other things.

Fourth, Edwards distinguished between particular and general beauty. By particular beauty he meant that which makes something appear beautiful in a limited sphere. A general beauty is beautiful even when it is viewed in the most comprehensive position possible, even when connected to all its possible connections. [24] Particular and general beauty are not the same, and may even oppose each other. This is best illustrated using an Edwardsian illustration: Imagine a few notes of a melody. When each note is taken individually, or in relation to the previous or subsequent one, it demonstrates a particular beauty. But if all those same notes were played at once, there would be a general beauty of harmony.

This general beauty highlights how extensive beauty is. For example, Edwards wrote that “true virtue most essentially consists in benevolence to Being in general. Or perhaps to speak more accurately, it is that consent, propensity and union of heart to Being in general, that is immediately exercised in a general good will.” [25] Edwards goes on to discuss this general consent in terms of beauty: “Beauty does not consist in discord and dissent, but in consent and agreement. And if every intelligent being is some way related to Being in general, and is a part of the universal system of existence; and so stands in connection with the whole; what can its general and true beauty be, but its union and consent with the great whole?” [26] Beauty then is consent, proportion, and reflection of being in general.

Fifth, Edwards tried to keep beauty more objective by contrasting simple and complex beauty. He writes in “The Mind” that “excellency therefore seems to consist in equality…. All beauty consists in similarness, or identity of relation.” [27] There is a simple beauty which shows forth things at a basic level of identicalness or exact correspondence; for example, circles with equal radii or triangles with equal sides. On the other hand there is complex beauty, which focuses not on identicality but on proportionality. [28] Hence points on a line which are not equal but are separated by distances with proportionate ratios are still beautiful.

Sixth, Edwards used the concept of sensibility in relation to beauty. Beauty is sensed or experienced; it “had an effect, and the effect was an affect (i.e., feeling).” [29] Edwards himself wrote that “when a form or quality appears lovely, pleasing and delightful in itself, then it is called beautiful; and this agreeableness or gratefulness of the idea is beauty. It is evident that the way we come by the idea of beauty is by immediate sensation of the gratefulness of the idea called beautiful; and not by finding out by argumentation any consequences.” [30] Therefore, beauty is not just abstract and/or objective. Beauty must also be sensed or experienced. These two facets always need to be considered together. [31]

The Beauty Of God

According to Edwards, understanding beauty is fundamental for a proper understanding of God. [32] Because beauty is the first principle of being and the inner, structural principle of being-itself, according to which the universal system of being is articulated, God needs to be understood as Beauty. [33] This means that God can be defined by His beauty. In Religious Affections, Edwards wrote, “God is God, and distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above ‘em, chiefly by his divine beauty, which is infinitely diverse from all other beauty.” [34] God is also where beauty is. According to Edwards, all beauty can only come from God, and all beauty ultimately points back to Him. [35] God can also be affirmed by beauty, because beauty is the objective standard for the perfection of being, which is Edwards’s way of describing the ultimate unity of being and good in God. [36]

God’s beauty is also describable as an attribute. For Edwards, beauty “is the first among the perfections of God.” [37] It is consistent with other attributes in that His beauty can be seen by looking at His eternality, His greatness, His loveliness, His wisdom, His power, or His holiness. [38] Then what is often thought of as beautiful, such as the beauty of nature and man, is just “deformity and darkness in comparison of the brighter glories and beauties of the Creator of all.” [39] As an attribute, God’s beauty is also from eternity.

God’s beauty then is who He is. In a sermon on God’s excellencies, Edwards said: “Neither does [God] thank anyone for anything he enjoys: his power, his wisdom, his excellency, his glory, his honor, and his authority are his own, and received from none other; he possesses them and he will possess them.” [40] Here, once again, the moral and ethical descriptions of God’s attributes are mixed with aesthetic and physical descriptions. [41] Beauty also reveals who God is because He rejoices in His beauty and His joy overflows: “If God does both esteem and delight in his own perfections and virtues, he can’t but value and delight in the expressions and genuine effects of them. So that in delighting in the expressions of his perfections, he manifests a delighting in his own perfections themselves.” [42] Yet it is only when man’s eyes are opened to see this beauty that “the heart is transformed into the same image and strongly engaged to imitate God.” [43]

God’s beauty can also help one understand the Trinity. Because general beauty cannot be beauty if it is not in agreement or consent, there must be relationship. Therefore, if God is excellent and beautiful, “there must be a plurality in God; otherwise there can be no consent in Him.” [44] Elsewhere Edwards wrote: “What we call ‘one’ may be excellent because of consent of parts, or some consent of those in that being that are distinguished into a plurality 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.” [45]

God’s beauty is also seen in His redemption of the world. Delattre lists numerous propositions that detail this, including Edwards’s understanding that “beauty is the law of the moral or spiritual world; beauty is both the end or goal of redemption and the principal means for the redemption of the moral or spiritual world; and beauty is the constitution of genuine community among men.” [46]

God’s beauty can also be experienced. This truly is a most remarkable gift from God: “They who see the beauty there is in true virtue, don’t perceive it by argumentation on its connections and consequences, but by the frame of their own minds, or a certain spiritual sense given them of God, whereby they immediately perceive pleasure in the presence of the idea of true virtue in their minds.” [47] But beauty is also an exercised gift. True virtue, for Edwards, is “that consent, propensity and union of heart to Being in general, that is immediately exercised in a general good will.” [48] Beauty then becomes a framework for expressing the genuine religious experience. [49] For Edwards, a beautiful life purposefully lives in love and obedience to God in response to God. [50] Saints who know God’s beauty have a comprehensive and well-ordered moral and spiritual character, resist deformity, and become “proportioned Christians.” [51]

In summary, God’s beauty was “in the eyes of Edwards, a multifaceted diamond, a precious collection of attributes in their purest form…. Over all the earth and all the created order stood this Lord, beautiful for the perfections of His person.” [52] How does this relate to secondary beauty? In the words of Edwards, “[A]ll the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation, is but the reflection of the diffused beams of the Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory.” [53] Without God’s beauty there is no beauty in our lives or in nature.

Beauty Of Nature

In the modern rush of life, the world and many Christians fail to stop and see that nature contains great elegance and precise design. Instead, when most people think of beauty, they think of more personal things. In a sense, Edwards would not disagree—though he would expand that, because it was only “natural for the Lord to create a world in which His ‘excellent perfections’ could shine.” [54] This world of shining beauty includes both animate and inanimate things.

The beauty of nature can be seen in created man. Edwards relates this beauty to the image of God in man individually as well as corporately. This is most visible in behavior. Natural and spiritual virtue, as well as conscience and justice, needs to be seen “as varieties and forms of beauty.” [55] So when people ask, “what is the nature of true virtue?

this is the same as to inquire, what that is which renders any habit, disposition, or exercise of the heart truly beautiful?” [56] Put positively, one of the most beautiful things, even to Edwards, is love. [57]

The beauty of nature is also in created things. To Edwards, there was an analogy between spiritual excellencies and the beauty of the skies, trees, or fields. He wrote in one of his collected miscellaneous thoughts that “the beauties of nature are really emanations, or shadows, of the excellencies of the Son of God.” [58] In other words, nature points to spiritual realities: “The sweetest and most charming beauty of [the corporeal world] is its resemblance of spiritual beauties.” [59] This pedagogical use of beauty can be applied to all aspects of nature:

When we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we only see the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ; when we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity; the easiness and naturalness of trees and vines [are] shadows of his infinite beauty and loveliness; the crystal rivers and murmuring streams have the footsteps of his sweet grace and bounty…. That beauteous light with which the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow of his spotless holiness and happiness, and delight in communicating himself. [60]

Interestingly, when stating that the things of the world are designed to shadow spiritual things, Edwards made it personal by referring to 1 Corinthians 15:36: “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” [61]

The laws of nature also reveal a secondary beauty. However, seeing the beauty in nature takes effort and work since, according to Edwards, the more complex a natural beauty is, the more hidden it is. [62]

When considering God’s moral government of the universe, Edwards noted that there is “much evidence of the most perfect exactness of proportion, harmony, equity and beauty in the mechanical laws of nature and other methods of providence…which are means by which God shews his regard to harmony, fitness, and beauty in what He does as the Governor of the natural world.” [63]

The beauty of nature can also be seen in non-living things. Geometric figures and harmonious tunes depict harmony within variety and therefore can present beauty. This can also be applied to all manmade creations as far as they are beautiful in the general sense. Interestingly, Edwards was living on the frontier of America in the eighteenth century and likely never saw many of the things people today consider beautiful. He probably never saw a cathedral or an art gallery, never heard a symphony or an opera, and was largely ignorant of Shakespeare and sculpture. [64] Yet he said that for all created things, “the greater the variety is, in equal uniformity, the greater the beauty: which is no more than to say, the more there are of different mutually agreeing things, the greater the beauty.” [65]

This recognition of secondary beauty is then universal regardless of culture or circumstance. This does not mean all things are equally perceived. Edwards himself said:

There are beauties that are more palpable and explicable, and there are hidden and secret beauties. The former pleases and we can tell why: we can explain and particularly point forth agreements that render the thing pleasing. Such are all artificial regularities: we can tell wherein the regularity lies that affects us. The latter sort are those beauties that delight us and we can’t tell why. Thus we find ourselves pleased in beholding the color of violets, but we know not what secret regularity or harmony it is that creates that pleasure in our minds. [66]

Wooddell summarizes Edwards when he writes that “people instinctively recognize secondary beauty, especially in more important objects (complex over simple, immaterial over material), and in those objects which are closer together, rather than scattered.” [67] Today, even though most people have working eyes and beauty is appreciated by all to a certain degree, very few realize its source.

Edwards also considered the role of the fall and sin on the sensibility of beauty. Before the fall, the light of the knowledge of God and His glory was enjoyed, but “when man fell all this light was at once extinguished and the world reduced back again to total darkness.” [68] Put in balance with his other quotations, Edwards does not mean that the creation was totally black, but that it was marred, ugly, corrupt, and its beauty weakened. [69] Sin did not completely erase all beauty from the world, for the countless natural types still shine each day: “There are some types of divine things, both in Scripture and also in the works of nature and constitution of the world, that are much more lively than others. Everything seems to aim that way; and in some things the image is very lively, in others less lively, in others the image but faint and the resemblance in but few particulars with many things wherein there is a dissimilitude. God has ordered things in this respect much as he has in the natural world.” [70]

But Edwards also warned about seeing natural beauty wrongly. The secondary beauty of nature cannot be confused with the primary beauty of the Creator. He wrote: “A taste of this kind of beauty is entirely a different thing from a taste of true virtue…. A taste of this inferior beauty in things immaterial is one thing which has been mistaken by some moralists for a true virtuous principle, implanted naturally in the hearts of all mankind.” [71] He also warned against those who think that reason is enough to see this beauty, displaying that even in his aesthetics, he was not truly Lockean. “The book of Scripture is the interpreter of the book of nature two ways: viz. by declaring to us those spiritual mysteries that are indeed signified or typified in the constitution of the natural world; and secondly, in actually making application of the signs and types in the book of nature as representations of those spiritual mysteries in many instances.” [72] Nor is Edwards neo-Platonic; he did not love flowers or birds for their shadows of perfect flowers or birds, but because they were “a living exhibition of the wisdom and beauty of God.” [73]

Beauty For Apologetics

Like Edwards’s day, beauty is still sought for, and yet so misunderstood. Therefore it is a ripe concept for apologetics, and needs to be recaptured for the sake of the world as well as the church. Using aesthetics could also help apologists build towards an understanding of Puritan apologetics. Following Edwards’s implicit and indirect approach to apologetics, an aesthetic apologetic could demonstrate the interconnection of Christian beliefs with other already accepted beliefs. [74]

Pursuing an aesthetic apologetic is not to make a reasonable discipline more sentimental and subjective. Rather, as Edwards himself noted, beauty “and the perception and enjoyment of spiritual beauty in particular, offers as deep a penetration of those mysteries and of that order as is available to men.” [75] That is why beauty can help apologists point people to God, build a doctrinal foundation, make apologetics preachable, connect apologetics to regeneration, use a visible point of contact that has deep content, and still appeal to the postmodern mind.

First, beauty can help apologists point people to God. Today, when asked about why something is beautiful, many say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Those who do not agree with that subjectivism generally refer to proportion, harmony, space, and where individual parts contribute to a greater end. In other words, aesthetics is something on which all people have an opinion. But it can also be raised as a question that points to the ultimate answer. According to Edwards, because God is the only One who has beauty in Himself, all beauty is derived from Him and never from any other source outside of Him. [76] Further, in order for a person to be truly virtuous or something to be truly beautiful, it must have “Being in general, or the great system of universal existence, for its direct and immediate object: so that no exercise of love or kind affection to any one particular being, that is but a small part of this whole, has anything of the nature of true virtue.” [77]

At least one reason why God has made secondary beauty perceivable is because “there is in it some image of the true, spiritual original beauty, which has been spoken of…. And so he has constituted the external world in an analogy to things in the spiritual world, in numberless instances.” [78] Edwards made this practical: “When one thing sweetly harmonizes with another, as the notes in music, the notes are so conformed and have such proportion one to another that they seem to have respect one to another, as if they loved one another. So the beauty of figures and motions is, when one part has such consonant proportion with the rest as represents a general agreeing and consenting together; which is very much the image of love in all the parts of a society united by a sweet consent and charity of heart.” [79] In other words, God can use beauty in music and nature, as well as many other things, to show people that there is more to life than the material. [80]

Aesthetics also allows apologists to use the work of unbelievers in order to point them to God. Here Edwards almost sounds Van Tillian: “Thus has God established and ordered that this principle of natural conscience, which though it implies no such thing as actual benevolence to Being in general, nor any delight in such a principle, simply considered, and so implies no truly spiritual sense or virtuous taste, yet should approve and condemn the same things that are approved and condemned by a spiritual sense or virtuous taste.” [81] Gerstner takes this a little differently when he writes that, “once being instructed by Scripture, that which Scripture did teach, in Edwards’s view, could be clearly demonstrated independently of Scripture to the fallen but rational mind which continued to function even in the most depraved of sinners.” [82]

Second, beauty points to a doctrinal foundation for worldviews, and is therefore helpful for apologetics. Few people today consider the source of beauty, and yet the source of beauty is the source of all things; for Edwards, the study of true beauty was the study of God. [83] He saw this clearly: even though we are “less than nothing, yet so has God dignified us, that he has made us for this very end: to think and be astonished at his glorious perfections.” [84] He really was “convinced that beauty is the reality in terms of which the Divine Being and the moral and religious life of human beings as well as the order of the universal system of being, both moral and natural, can best be understood.” [85]

According to Strachan and Sweeney, Edwards believed that “God’s majestic nature not only enables but calls Him to glory in Himself. As a perfect being, a figure of absolute eternality, greatness, loveliness, power, wisdom, holiness, and goodness, God deserved to celebrate and glorify Himself.” [86] His creation ought to join Him in doing so. Therefore, all people need a worldview where “beauty is the key to the structure and the dynamics of the moral and religious life and more particularly to the manner of the divine governance and its relation to human freedom and responsibility.” [87] All of this reminds us that practical steps are needed to embrace a radical God- first worldview, rather than the me-first worldview so common in the culture and church today. [88]

Third, beauty is preachable apologetics. In part, this is because of the rich treasure-chest of analogies that it provides. As already mentioned, God makes these analogies in nature so people would recognize a sense of spiritual beauty and regard the true beauty in God. [89] However, the analogous beauty in nature to God does not dismiss the full character of God: “The waves and billows of the sea in a storm and the dire cataracts there are of rivers have a representation of the terrible wrath of God, and amazing misery of them that endure it.” [90] Preachers can preach the full counsel of God because something is truly beautiful only insofar as it harmonizes with being in general, and the truly beautiful is such in relation to all things, and not just a few particular other things. [91]

Edwards himself encapsulated this as he, in spite of his challenging philosophical writings and academics, was primarily a preacher. [92] Charles Geschiere argues that the “beauty of God, the beauty of the created order, the beauty of Christ’s person and work, the beauty of the redeemed heart, the beauty of holiness (God’s and the Christian’s) is the main thread that runs through almost all of [Edwards’s] printed works.” [93] And still, beauty and sensibility come through in Edwards’s sermon preparation, sermon writing, and even sermon delivery. [94] As he considered his homiletical task, Edwards’s mission was “to touch the heart, to effectively raise the affections in the direction of agreeableness, pleasure, delight, and love for God, that each hearer might have a new spiritual sense of the heart for the beauty of and the Beauty that is God.” [95] He did not invoke beauty so as to simply sing God’s praises, but “to speak as truly as he can about the nature of God and the relation of the triune God to His creation.” [96]

Fourth, beauty connects apologetic arguments with the necessity of regeneration. That Edwards saw regeneration as necessary is clear from his writing: “Private affection, if not subordinate in general affection, is not only liable, as the case may be, to issue in enmity to Being in general, but has a tendency to it, as the case certainly is and must necessarily be. For he that is influenced by private affection, not subordinate to regard to Being in general, sets up its particular or limited object above Being in general.” [97] If one wants to understand and properly appreciate any beauty, one needs to find the Ultimate Beauty: “For how should one love and value a disposition to a thing, or a tendency to promote a thing, and for that very reason, because it tends to promote it—when the thing itself is what he is regardless of, and has no value for, nor desires to have promoted?” [98] It is clear then that, for Edwards, beauty was not separate from regeneration. Rather, as Delattre notes, in beauty Edwards found “the central clue to the meaning of conversion, of the new life in Christ, and of the holiness and joy given in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.” [99]

While his language is somewhat unguarded here and he leaves himself open to misinterpretation, Wooddell says that God can use Edwards’s concept of secondary beauty “to draw people toward salvation.” [100] Edwards’s own words may be clearer: “I am bold to assert, that never was any considerable change wrought in the mind or conversation of any one person, by anything of a religious nature, that ever he read, heard, or saw, that had not his affections moved.” [101] Elsewhere Edwards said, “The things of religion take place in men’s hearts, no further than they are affected by them.” [102] Regeneration is not only intellectual, but also affectional. [103]

But beauty is also a response to regeneration. When true beauty “is discovered to the soul, it, as it were, opens a new world to its view.” [104] Therefore, God’s perfection and beauty should remind all those who have tasted His goodness by faith that they must humble themselves and bow in His presence, rejoicing that through Christ they can have access to Him and will not be crushed by the weight of His glory. [105] It is here that Terrance Erdt argues that Edwards’s concept of beauty is not connected to John Locke, but more to Calvin’s concept of suavitas or “sweetness.” [106] This sense of beauty was to define the response to one’s experimental knowledge of regeneration. [107]

This leads then to beauty as a point of contact for apologetics. Beauty seems to be a nearly universal point of contact for Edwards. When discussing the beauty of the world, Edwards himself makes the corollary that this beauty is “the reason why almost all men, and those that seem to be very miserable, love life: because they cannot bear to lose the sight of such a beautiful and lovely world.” [108] As Delattre says, for Edwards “no real good is fully known until its beauty is known and enjoyed and beauty is neither known nor enjoyed until it is sensibly apprehended and ‘taken to heart’ by a ‘sense of the heart.’” [109]

Edwards’s conception of beauty allows apologists to bring truly beautiful things like worldview, music, truth, lives, and even ecclesiology into the apologetic conversation. While these things are not traditional apologetic arguments, their true beauty allows them entrance into apologetic discussion. According to Edwards, “wherever one discovered intelligence, loveliness, or depictions of spiritual realities, one found prime evidence of God’s design. Beauty was not a concept one could abstract from God, but was the very essence of God.” [110]

These points of contact are visible to both Christians and non- Christians. While Christians can recognize spiritual beauty in another Christian and appreciate it for what it is, “some unbelievers might also see spiritual beauty in the life of a believer, but they cannot know it for what is, again a reflection of God’s beauty. They only know that it is attractive and cannot tell why.” [111] This is because the natural conscience common to mankind may approve of Being in general from its uniformity, equality, and justice though it cannot fully approve of true virtue without a regenerated taste for it. [112]

Fifth, beauty helps apologists appeal to the postmodern mind. While that obviously was not Edwards’s intention and it cannot be fully elaborated here, it is a beneficial effect. Because Edwards sees beauty as a perception via the mind or spirit or even an instinctive sense given by God, the compelling nature of beauty as an apologetic argument is that it does not depend on argumentation as traditionally understood. [113]

Traditionally, apologetics has focused on rationality and logic. However, by reclaiming Edwards’s understanding of beauty, apologetics can help the unbeliever be open to listening about God and the gospel. [114] As Strachan and Sweeney note, “Beauty, whether God- centered or not, captivates the human mind and heart.” [115] Now that does not mean that rationality, evidence, and reason are discarded, but it does mean they may be temporarily bypassed in favor of the sensory. [116] Even the rational Edwards wrote that “the manner of being affected with the immediate presence of the beautiful idea, depends not on reasonings about the idea after we have it, before we can find out whether it be beautiful or not; but on the frame of our minds, whereby they are so made that such an idea, as soon as we have it, is grateful, or appears beautiful.” [117] For him, rationalism was not exalted at the expense of the sensory, nor were the affections exalted at the expense of reason. [118]

Spiritual beauty is not seen by all. Following Edwards, Delattre writes, “the perception of the beauty of a thing does not yet guarantee that the existential engagement with that good is for its intrinsic goodness rather than for its instrumental goodness.” [119] There are some things only the regenerate can see. Edwards said, “Thus in that great goodness of God to sinners, and the wonderful dying love of Christ, there is a natural good, which all men love, as they love themselves; as well as a spiritual and holy beauty, which is seen only by the regenerate.” [120]

For the believer, understanding beauty will give perpetual food for the soul as well as purpose to life and meaning to existence. [121] “Probably tis with regard to this image or resemblance which secondary beauty has of true spiritual beauty that God has so constituted nature that the presenting of this inferior beauty…[has] a tendency to assist those whose hearts are under the influence of a truly virtuous temper, to dispose them to the exercises of divine love, and enliven in them a sense of spiritual beauty.” [122] In a sermon, Edwards said that “when the heart is sensible of the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension. It is implied in a person’s being heartily sensible of the loveliness of a thing, that the idea of it is sweet and pleasant to his soul.” [123]

Therefore, beauty, as Edwards understood it, needs to be rediscovered. Strachan and Sweeney give some practical guidelines on how Christians can increase their capacity for recognizing beauty. They suggest clearing space in technologically saturated lives to recognize the wisdom of the Lord in the natural realm; returning to nature and enjoying singing, praying, laughing, and contemplating small delights; communing with God in the realm created to testify of Him; looking for spiritual truths in daily lives; caring for creation; and longing for the new realm that will be a complete place of beauty and love where God will dwell forever. [124]

Then, rather than pursuing false beauty with the world, Christians will pursue true beauty by knowing God, His Word, and His world. We cannot neglect beauty, because then we would not only neglect an aspect of creation, but would also fall to an improper view of God, our Creator and Sustainer. Edwards reminds us that because God is beautiful, we are interested in beauty. Christians should have the most beautiful imaginations, the greatest love for beautiful things, and the most passionate desire to protect and promote true beauty. [125] Apologetics is one arena that could be transformed by such an aesthetic focus.

Notes

1. Joseph D. Wooddell, The Beauty of the Faith: Using Aesthetics for Christian Apologetics (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 52-54, 88-91.
2. Whether Edwards can be considered a Puritan has been disputed. See Joel Beeke and Randall Peterson, Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006), 193-204; David C. Brand, The Last Puritan: Jonathan Edwards, Self-Love, and the Dawn of the Beatific Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1-29.
3. Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York: Sloane and Associates, 1949), 67; Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 94.
4. Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 108.
5. Roland A. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1968), 15.
6. Louis Joseph Mitchell, “The Experience of Beauty in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards” (Th.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1995).
7. Mitchell, Experience of Beauty, 11.
8. Jonathan Edwards, “The Mind,” in Scientific and Philosophical Writings, ed. Wallace Anderson, vol. 6 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 344. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 6.
9. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:332.
10. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:332.
11. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 32.
12. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 47.
13. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 2.
14. Roland Delattre, “Beauty and Theology: A Reappraisal of Jonathan Edwards,” in Critical Essays on Jonathan Edwards, ed. William J. Scheick (Boston: Hall & Co., 1980), 136.
15. Charles Geschiere, “Taste and See That the Lord is Good: The Aesthetical- Affectional Preaching of Jonathan Edwards” (Th.M. thesis, Calvin Theological Seminary, 2008), 7; See also Douglas Elwood, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 25; Delattre; Beauty and Sensibility, 9.
16. Jonathan Edwards, “The Nature of True Virtue,” in Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 8 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale Press, 1989), 539. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 8.
17. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:551, emphasis added; Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 46 has a helpful visual summary of this idea.
18. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:548.
19. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 31.
20. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:561-62.
21. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 31.
22. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:565.
23. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 51.
24. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:540.
25. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:540.
26. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:541.
27. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:332-34.
28. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:333.
29. McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 99.
30. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 1 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 141.
31. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 3.
32. McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 93.
33. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 1-2.
34. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John Smith, vol. 2 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 298. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 2.
35. Geschiere, “Taste and See,” 102.
36. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 2.
37. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 2.
38. Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards on Beauty (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010), 27-38.
39. Jonathan Edwards, “God’s Excellencies,” in Sermons and Discourses 1720– 1723, ed. Wilson M. Kimnath, vol. 10 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 421. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 10.
40. Edwards, “God’s Excellencies,” in WJE, 10:419. Italics mine.
41. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 36.
42. Jonathan Edwards, “Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in WJE, 8:437.
43. Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies,” no. 1127, in The “Miscellanies,” 833-1152, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw, vol. 20 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 498. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 20.
44. Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies,” no. 117, in The “Miscellanies,” a–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer, vol. 13 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 284. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 13.
45. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:337.
46. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 185.
47. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:620.
48. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:546.
49. McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 93.
50. Joseph Wooddell, “Jonathan Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” Criswell Theological Review, 5 (Fall 2007), 87.
51. Jonathan Edwards, “Charity and Its Fruits,” in WJE, 8:338.
52. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 38.
53. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:550-51.
54. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 53.
55. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 2.
56. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:539.
57. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:337.
58. Edwards, “Miscellanies,” no. 108, in WJE, 13:279.
59. Jonathan Edwards, “Beauty of the World (1725),” in A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2003), 14.
60. Edwards, “Miscellanies,” no. 108, in WJE, 13:279.
61. Jonathan Edwards, “Images of Divine Things (1728),” in Jonathan Edwards Reader, 16.
62. Edwards, “Beauty of the World,” 15.
63. Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies,” no. 1196, in “The Miscellanies” 1153– 1360, ed. Douglas Sweeney, vol. 22 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 118.
64. Miller, Edwards, 292, 110.
65. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:562-63.
66. Edwards, “Beauty of the World,” 15.
67. Wooddell, “Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 89-90.
68. Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F. Wilson, vol. 9 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 133.
69. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 60.
70. Jonathan Edwards, “Shadows of Divine Things,” in Typological Writings, ed. Wallace Anderson and David Watters, vol. 11 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 114. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 11.
71. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:573-74.
72. Edwards, “Shadows of Divine Things,” in WJE, 11:106.
73. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 48.
74. McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 150.
75. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 1.
76. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:363-65; McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 96.
77. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:541.
78. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:564.
79. Edwards, “The Mind,” in WJE, 6:380.
80. Wooddell, “Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 88.
81. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:595-96.
82. John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Orlando, Fla.: Ligonier Ministries, 1993), 3:292-93.
83. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 20-21.
84. Edwards, “God’s Excellencies,” in WJE, 10:417.
85. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 1.
86. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 40.
87. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 2.
88. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 42.
89. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:565.
90. Edwards, “Shadows of Divine Things,” in WJE, 11:58.
91. Wooddell, “Jonathan Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 85.
92. George Marsden, quoted in Gescheire, “Taste and See,” 9; See also Perry Miller, “Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart,” Harvard Theological Review 41, no. 2 (April 1948), 123.
93. Geschiere, “Taste and See,” v.
94. Geschiere, “Taste and See,” 10.
95. Geschiere, “Taste and See,” 96.
96. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 117.
97. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:555.
98. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:549.
99. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 2.
100. Wooddell, “Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 88. He later says on p. 94, “Nothing of what I have said in this essay equates recognition of beauty with salvation.”
101. Edwards, “Religious Affections”, in WJE, 2:102.
102. Jonathan Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” in The Great Awakening, ed. C.C. Goen, vol. 4 of Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 297-98. Hereafter this volume is cited as WJE, 4.
103. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” in WJE, 4:388.
104. Edwards, Religious Affections, in WJE, 2:273.
105. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 41.
106. Terrence Erdt, Jonathan Edwards, Art and the Sense of the Heart (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), 20; see also Kenneth P. Minkema, “A ‘Dordtian Philosophe’: Jonathan Edwards, Calvin, and Reformed Orthodoxy,” Church History and Religious Culture 91 (2011), 241.
107. Geschiere, “Taste and See,” 3.
108. Edwards, “Beauty of the World,” 15.
109. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 73; Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” in WJE, 4:442.
110. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 65.
111. Wooddell, “Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 86.
112. Gerstner, Rational Biblical Theology, 3:265.
113. Wooddell, “Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 94.
114. Wooddell, “Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 94.
115. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 142.
116. Wooddell, “Edwards, Beauty, and Apologetics,” 94.
117. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:619.
118. George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 282.
119. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 74.
120. Edwards, Religious Affections, in WJE, 2:277.
121. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 21.
122. Edwards, “True Virtue,” in WJE, 8:565.
123. Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” in WJE, 4:442.
124. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 66-69.
125. Strachan and Sweeney, On Beauty, 142.