Introduction
Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his Herrlichkeit, laments the eclipse of the aesthetic in modern theology, noting that the being of a Christian is itself a thing of beauty inscribed by the grace of God; that is, it is a form of existence “opened up to us by the God-Man's act of redemption. . . . God's incarnation perfects the whole ontology and aesthetics of created being.”Footnote 1 Von Balthasar traces the loss of the aesthetic dimension from Protestant theology to the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, which seeks to abstract “data” of scriptural revelation into objective formulae. This approach leads to the historicism of Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Barth, effectively removing the meditative gaze from theological contemplation.Footnote 2 Von Balthasar's ultimate argument is that it is necessary for Protestant theology to revive the Alexandrian tradition in order to recover the “transcendent principle of beauty as derived from and most proper to God,” which is to be “for us the very apex and archetype of beauty in the world.”Footnote 3
Von Balthasar's thesis is compelling, insofar as the aesthetic dimension has indeed “disappeared,” for the most part, from Protestant dogmatics. Yet, an important element is missing from his evaluation. At the threshold of the Enlightenment, the American Protestant theologian Jonathan Edwards effected a revival of theological aesthetics—the beauty of God, creation, and redemption—through an appropriation of the philosophical revival of Platonic metaphysics in conjunction with a reinterpretation of classical Reformed theology.Footnote 4 The striking theological vision Edwards produced is, in effect, the fulfillment of von Balthasar's imperative to the Protestant tradition. The unique synthesis forged by Edwards bears a fascinating resemblance to the aesthetic theological system of the seventh century Orthodox theologian Maximus the Confessor. While certain features, such as ecclesiology and sacraments, cannot be reconciled to each other and should not be flattened out (as these remain the unique “marks” of their respective traditions), the overarching framework of their theological systems aligns at certain points, particularly in their articulation of the aesthetic dimension of the doctrines of God, being, creation, and redemption.
This paper is an attempt to address Balthasar's problematic by examining the congruencies between Edwards and Maximus in their discussions of certain theological loci from an aesthetic perspective.Footnote 5 The line of argument that will shape this examination is that from their respective historical standpoints both Edwards and Maximus synthetically appropriated neoplatonic categories into a constructive framework of “conciliar” theology—that is, theology within the tradition of the ecumenical councils (in a parallel manner, both figures nuanced the theological traditions in which they worked)—resulting in a richly aesthetic theological vision of God and the world.Footnote 6 The primary focus of the paper will be upon Edwards's reconceptualization of the ontological being of God and human redemption in relation to one another, under the auspices of the categories of beauty and harmony—structures that form the basis of God's relationship to the created world through the “repetition” of God's being. As I trace these themes through the writings of Edwards (special attention will be given to the “Two Dissertations,” “Discourse on the Trinity,” “Justification by Faith Alone,” and “The Miscellanies”), I will compare them to relevant aspects of Maximus the Confessor's cosmological doctrine of God and redemption as found especially in “Centuries on Love” and the “Ambigua” (I will offer a brief overview of Maximus's historical and theological setting in the first section in order to establish his aesthetic framework). In the conclusion, I will briefly discuss the historical events and forces that led to the formation of the theological visions of Maximus and Edwards; though centuries apart, these events and forces created similar theological milieus. At the heart of the constructive visions of the two theologians is a consonant view of God and the glory and beauty of redemption.
The implication of this analysis is that at the beginning and end of all things, for Edwards and Maximus, is the unmitigated participation in and enjoyment of the beauteous being of God in glory, in which God gathers redeemed creation into ceaseless and ever-increasing union with the triune community.Footnote 7
The Aesthetics of God in Maximus the Confessor
Brief Background to MaximusFootnote 8
Maximus the Confessor (580–662) lived in an era marked by rupture—the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the division of the Orthodox-Catholic church between the imperial fronts, the fracturing of the tradition in the wake of Chalcedon, the ruling of the Henotikon, not to mention the rise of Islam on the Eastern border. In fact, Maximus's own life bears the marks of rupture on account of his intricate involvement in the doctrinal controversies and disputes of the era (which themselves had inimical ecclesial and secular political implications), resulting in three periods of exile and eventual martyrdom.Footnote 9 Maximus, throughout his career, was at the forefront of the theological controversies and upheavals surrounding seventh-century Christology, upholding the Orthodox tradition of Chalcedon and the “fathers” in the face of the prevailing resurgence of Eutychean and monophysite Christology.Footnote 10 Maximus's public defense of the received Orthodox tradition gained notoriety, particularly his disputes with the monothelite bishop Pyrrhus in Carthage, which lead to the extension of a personal invitation to Maximus to participate in the Lateran Council in Rome in 649.Footnote 11 Maximus's alignment with the papal council in Rome contributed to his broad ecumenical acceptance as a genuine, mediatory theologian, an assessment that was decisively sealed by the affirmation of his work by the Sixth Council at Constantinople in 681 (approximately twenty years after his death).Footnote 12
As a theologian, Maximus has been acclaimed as the “real father of Byzantine theology.”Footnote 13 More significantly, he is an ingenious interpreter of the vast tradition of Eastern theology, from Origen to the Cappadocians to Chalcedon. In effect, Maximus utilized the logic of the Chalcedonian formula and Plotinian neoplatonism as a rubric through which to interpret and synthesize (or re-read) the earlier theologians. The main form of Maximus's work is commentary and scholia on the works of Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. Maximus, faced with the monumental challenge to the tradition of the fathers posed by heterodox clerics as well as imperial politics, worked to entrench and repristinate the Orthodox tradition through vigorous reiteration and interpretation.Footnote 14 Maximus toiled diligently to reclaim the Orthodox vision of Christ and salvation as the center point of theology and Christian experience, defending it against the encroachment of the anti-Chalcedonian position, which, for Maximus, limited the possibility of human redemption by limiting Christ's person to less than fully divine and fully human.Footnote 15 Concomitantly, Maximus was concerned with extirpating the more egregious philosophical errors of Origenism from the tradition; thus, he took on the role of reader, appropriator, and critic of the “fons du Platonisme.”Footnote 16 Maximus culled much from Plotinus and the Cappadocians, which he employed to redirect the tradition away from Origenism and closer to the Christian Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius.
The radiance of Maximus's mind is apparent in the panoramic vision of the tradition that he reconstructs, bringing into a “symphonic” synthesis the incarnational thought of the Cappadocians, the cosmic vista of Dionysius's mystical theology, the logic of Chalcedon, the cataphatic-apophatic dialectic of neoplatonism, and the spirituality of asceticism, all reoriented into a framework defined by love and beauty (which are, in essence, icons of the glory of God's being).Footnote 17 Maximus constructs a theological vision of the universe as the mystery of the unfolding of God's being and glory toward creation (disrupted by the fall of humankind), in which creation is redeemed through the incarnation of the Son, who “brings” creation back to its original unity with the triune being. The whole of Christian existence, for Maximus, is oriented toward the movement of love and glory in God's cosmic redemption.Footnote 18
The Cosmic Aesthetic of Maximus
Maximus developed a theological vision of the cosmic mystery of the triune being of God in which God is the “ineffable light” and the “infinitely beautiful” being above all being.Footnote 19 God's beauty is the supernal light of the whole of creation, and, according to Maximus, creation is inscribed with this beauty in the form of a cosmic language that utters unceasing “speech” of the ineffable and transcendent being.Footnote 20 Creation is the result of the emanation and “spilling out” of the refulgent surplus of the divine being, a procession ad extra of the triune God, extending life and light outward.Footnote 21 For Maximus, creation participates in the beauty and being of God in an iconic or refractive manner, whereby God's own beauty and image are passed through the cosmic order, causing the mind to “ascend” in contemplation of the transcendent.Footnote 22
The structure of creation lends itself to the aesthetic ascent of the mind to the hidden mystery of God's being, which remains above and beyond human comprehension and utterance. For Maximus, creation is circumfused with divine principles (logoi) that mediate indirect knowledge of God to the human mind.Footnote 23 The created order is given a revelatory character by the immanence of the principles or logoi logoi, which are related to the divine mind and being and reflect the radiance of God, but God remains radically transcendent and beyond true scrutibility. Following the neoplatonic paradigm, God's being eclipses the capabilities of the human mind and language to grasp the mystery and the beauty that is God in God's true essence.Footnote 24 For Gregory and Dionysius, ascent in spiritual knowledge is a process of negation (apophasis) that leads to silence and “unknowing” (agnosia), which is an ecstatic experience of sublimity in the mystery of God. Maximus shares the apophatic aspect of their theology, but he redirects the neoplatonic design of the system away from agnostic silence and toward radiant love in God's redemptive movement.
The problematic, for Maximus, is less the radicalism of God's transcendence, (though he certainly accepts this), and more the fall of the human creature. Creation reveals a glimpse of the true beauty and true goodness of the divine being, but the human mind is unable to truly comprehend this beauty and goodness because of its fallen nature.Footnote 25 Maximus holds firmly to the doctrine of the corruption of human nature and the human mind as a result of the Adamic fall, which rendered true perception and knowledge of God an impossibility for the creature due to the privation of her faculties. Human beings are subject to instability and blindness on account of their inheritance of this sinful, privated nature and disposition.Footnote 26 Thus, Maximus reorients apophatic theology from a process of negating statements and perceptions to a negation of human nature itself. He brings these ideas into conjunction with Chalcedonian Christology, according to which fallen humanity is taken up and healed by the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in which the hidden and “unknown” God becomes fully manifest.Footnote 27 This becomes, for Maximus, the “cosmic liturgy” of participation in the divine being through the indwelling of God in human flesh. The true apophasis is thus the negation of human frailty and sin and the negation of distance between humanity and God. The point of contact, the origin of humanity's return, is in the incarnation.
Maximus constructs a truly aesthetic cosmic Christology through which he re-reads the tradition of Orthodox theology. He employs Chalcedonian logic to reinterpret the infamous axiom of Gregory Nazianzus, “that which is not assumed is not healed,”Footnote 28 resulting in the recapitulation of the whole of creation in Jesus Christ. Maximus conceives of the incarnation as the divine taking on the human and uniting it to the divine (without truncation, abridgment, confusion or mixture of either nature), and in so doing, bringing together the whole order of creation in intimate unity with the divine being.Footnote 29 The descent of the Logos of God into human flesh is the point of ascent for the whole of creation toward a universal vision of the beauty and glory of God in all things.Footnote 30 The aberrancies and limitations of creation are interred in the human flesh of Jesus Christ and recreated and lifted up in his resurrection, so that all created existence is gifted with a share in the divine life itself. The mystery of creation is revealed in the being of Jesus Christ, so that the divine can be truly and wonderfully known through the manifest revelation of God in the flesh. For Maximus, the mystery of the incarnation as the redemption of creation is the revelation of the beauty of God, and thus the divine movement—from above to below and below to above—culminates in a harmonious and aesthetic union of the divine and the creation.
Human redemption consists in the true knowledge of God in the mystery of the incarnation, which is the ultimate revelation of God's beauty and goodness. In this knowledge, for Maximus, is the ascent of the human mind and spirit to the ineffable beauty of God, which is most fundamentally the glory of God's love. Through the grace of Christ's existence in the hypostatic union, the human being is now possessed of a mind and nature capable of grasping God, and through the working of grace by the Spirit, human beings are able to contemplate the true beauty of God and are compelled “upward” in spirit into ineluctable union.Footnote 31 In short, the Logos activates the logoi in created beings by assimilating them to itself, so that the human is turned from within toward God, freed for contemplation of God, and given true participation in God's beauty and glory. The whole of Christian existence is thus conceived as a process of growth toward the goal of unabridged union. For Maximus, the Christian life is a spiritual process of orientation toward the love and beauty of God manifest in Jesus Christ, and interiorly mediated to the human mind and spirit. As the human contemplates the beauty of God, she moves continually away from the earthly and mundane to the inner glory of God's triune being, in which she is destined to dwell.Footnote 32 As a result, she becomes ever more enraptured by the beauty and love of God and is drawn ever onward toward God. This becomes the basis for the aesthetic (and ascetic) vision of virtue and holy passion, in which the process of human salvation, as an imbrication of justification/conversion and sanctification, is bound up in the increasing sense of beauty and harmony between Christ and the Christian.
The pivotal center of Maximus's cosmic vision is the person of Jesus Christ as defined by the Chalcedonian formula, for it is only because Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human (on both sides) that this redemption can be conceived. Out of the fullness of God's being, God assumes the totality of the human condition in God's self without ceasing to be God, and in so doing, God brings the human into union with the divine itself, and thereby heals the fissures of the human constitution and grants it the gift of participation. For Maximus, the goal of the incarnationFootnote 33 is to allow creation to exist in symmetry and harmony with the divine in the glory of God's own being and life, which is the ultimate end of creation itself.Footnote 34 Maximus understands the redemptive nature of Christ's descent and ascent to be the true movement of God to bring all creation into the harmonious stasis of God's inner trinitarian life, to partake in the inexhaustible beauty and glory of God—a deification of the world in Christ.
The Doctrine of God as Infinite Beauty in Edwards and Maximus
The Doctrine of God as Infinite Beauty in Edwards and Maximus Jonathan Edwards, from his earliest writings, defined the being of God in terms of perfection, infinitude, and beauty.Footnote 35 In his essay “On Atoms,” Edwards contends with the metaphysical materialism of Hobbes, arguing that God is the single infinite and self-existent substance, precluding the eternality of ordinary matter.Footnote 36 Edwards, here, echoes the early Christian neoplatonic understanding of God as the infinite source of all being and existence, in that God is the sole uncreated, ungenerated being, existing in total perfection and aseity.Footnote 37 As Edwards notes, “God is infinite and has all possible existence, perfection, and excellence . . . as [God] is in every way the first and Supreme being and his excellence is in all respects the original excellence, the fountain of all good.”Footnote 38 God exists perfectly in God's own being, and is not subject to motion or instability, as is all matter. In neoplatonic understanding, perfection consists in freedom from movement and in simplicity of essence. For the Christian neoplatonists, God's being was perceived as simple in substance, that is, without complex parts or components. Maximus the Confessor states:
We know that [the Godhead] is beyond all division in complete simplicity, not a whole made out of parts, or a part derived from a whole. For the Godhead is beyond all division and composition and part and whole . . . for it is free from any kind of connection or property and is unbounded, with nothing before or after or alongside it, since it is beyond everything.Footnote 39
Edwards, likewise, argues that God is “perfect and absolute simplicity,” being without composite complexity.Footnote 40 As in the Eastern tradition, Edwards posits that “the divine essence is undivided and independent,” that is to say that God is complete and non-composite in essence and existence.Footnote 41
Edwards comes even closer to the Eastern tradition in his conception of the doctrine of the Trinity, in which he identifies the perfect simplicity of the divine essence as that which is shared in communion between the three persons—a perfect, divine community.Footnote 42 In Eastern thought, the perfection of the divine being leads to self-replication, in which the singular being of the Father generates the Son and the Spirit in the perfect ideation (logos) and perception of the divine being within the divine mind; Maximus asserts that it is the resplendent beauty and glory of the Father's being that processes forth a perfect image (ikon) in the Son, and the love of the Father for the Son brings forth the Spirit.Footnote 43 This is not posited as movement within the divine itself, but as an eternal quality of the divine being to be fecund and effulgent in self-perception and antecedent love. Edwards proceeds in a similar direction arguing that “the Deity [is] truly and properly repeated by God's having an absolutely perfect idea of himself; and this idea is a substantial idea and has the very essence of God, is truly God.”Footnote 44 Thus, the Son, as the second person, is the Logos of God's being, that is, the idea or image of God's perfected being that is grounded in God's perception of God's own being and glory. Edwards notes, likewise, that the Son is not only the Logos or idea in the divine mind, but is “the brightness, effulgence and shining forth of God's glory [as it] appears to himself.”Footnote 45 For Edwards, as for Maximus, the glorious nature of the divine being is the root of the ideational repetition of God in the mind of the Father, so that the Son is truly the same in essence and kind as the Father, thus not resulting in a complexity of being, but rather an unfolding and emanation of the original and primal glory and beauty of God's self.Footnote 46 The love of God for God's glory, which is in the image or Logos, yields the procession of the Spirit, so that the Spirit is, in Edwards's words, “God's infinite love and delight in [God's] self;”Footnote 47 the Spirit is itself the love of God ad intra that holds together the divine persons in a singular and interpenetrative koinonia of essence.Footnote 48
The identification of the Spirit as the love of God aligns Edwards to a limited degree with the Latin tradition, following Augustine. In his discussion of the Trinity, Augustine posits that the Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, and furthermore, that the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son.Footnote 49 In the Western tradition, then, the Spirit is conceived of as proceeding from the unique relationality between the Father and the Son (while, of course, being equal in essence and of the same substance). Edwards, likewise, notes that “the Holy Spirit is the divine love itself, the love of the Father and the Son . . . [as] the Holy Ghost is that love of God and Christ that is breathed forth primarily towards each other.”Footnote 50 While it is beyond doubt that Edwards follows the traditional Western assertion of the filioque, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, there is present in Edwards's theology an underlying notion of the primacy of the Father in the trinitarian being of God. For the Eastern tradition, this is the signal element of the unity of the Triune community, in that the Father is the “fountain” or source of the Son and the Spirit, who share in the essence of the Father and are, in fact, “spirated” from the substance of the Father. The trinitarian persons, in the Eastern mind, are equal in dignity and form and are of the same essence, sharing in the simplicity and perfection of the divine substance itself; yet, the Father is the primal ground of the whole Godhead.Footnote 51 The theological grammar of the Trinity, in the East, is bound up in the differentiation of the Father according to hypostatic properties that pertain directly to the relational nexus of the divine community, as the Father is the ground and origin of the hypostases of the Son and the Spirit. Accordingly, the Eastern theologians charged that the Western conception injected two sources of divinity into the Trinity. Evoking the Eastern tradition, Edwards states explicitly that “the Father is the fountain of the Godhead . . . [as] the Father sustains the dignity of the Deity, and sends forth the other two. All is from him, all is in him originally.”Footnote 52 Thus, according to Edwards the Father is the ontological ground of the Son and the Spirit, and the most immediate cause of both the Son and the Spirit is the Father.Footnote 53 Still more directly, he states:
The Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence . The Son is the Deity generated by God's understanding, or having an idea of himself, and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the Deity subsisting in act, or the diving essence flowing out and breathed forth, in God's infinite love to and delight in himself.Footnote 54
This statement, in accord with the image of the Father as the fountainhead, corresponds to the Eastern understanding of the Father as the archê (source or principle) of the Godhead, the ungenerated being whose effulgence bequeaths the hypostases of the Son and the Spirit; the Father, in this understanding, is the one hypostasis that does not draw identity from the others, but shares his own essence and dignity with them.Footnote 55 Edwards moves subtly in a different direction than his Western forbearers, against the theologies of both Calvin and Turretin. He does so even in the midst of his affirmation of the very doctrine that divides the East and West to this day.
The resilient feature of Edwards's affirmation of the filioque is that though his language, in many instances, clearly bears the impress of Augustine, Calvin, and the Reformed tradition, his casting of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in particular his description of the person of the Holy Spirit, bears a striking resemblance to the theology of the Eastern tradition. As Edwards expounds on the procession of the Spirit, he speaks with a still more distinctly Eastern accent. He maintains that the spiration or procession of the Spirit is most directly related to the Father's beholding his own image in the Son, and loving the image; out of the reciprocity of love of the Father for the Son (ikon) and the Son in the Father, the Spirit comes forth.Footnote 56 In fact, Edwards often remarks that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, in the economic movement. The primary quality of this construction, for Edwards, is that the Spirit relates to the intimate connection of the Father with the Son, and that the Spirit proceeds directly, in essence, from the Father, and secondarily through the Son.Footnote 57 The importance of this construction is decisively demonstrated by Maximus on the question of the filioque:
The Westerners cited the consonant testimonies of the Latin Fathers, as well as that of Cyril of Alexandria in his commentary on the Gospel of Saint John. They showed thereby that they did not view the Son as cause of the Spirit, for they knew that the Father alone is cause of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but they showed that the Spirit proceeds through the Son, and thereby showed the conjunction of their nature, which is no way different.Footnote 58
Edwards's argument is consonant with Maximus, in that the Father is conceived of as the generative source of the hypostases of the Son and the Spirit. Edwards does construe the Spirit to be from both the Father and the Son, yet, in line with Maximus, the Son is seen as the conduit through which the Spirit is brought forth by the Father, primarily in his act of love for the Son. The upshot of this is that Edwards recasts the received Western trinitarian paradigm so as to move it along a trajectory parallel to the Eastern tradition, even utilizing the language of the Reformed tradition while lending it a Byzantine flavor. In this respect, he follows the lead of the Cambridge Platonists, in particular Cudworth, who adopted this exact paradigm from the Eastern theologians.Footnote 59 Edwards echoes the Christian neoplatonic conception of the Trinity in his understanding of the Son as the idea or logos of the divine being in the mind of the Father. This recalls the idealism of Platonism, which left its impress on the Eastern tradition itself and is the source of the conception of the Father as the archê or fount of the Godhead.
The keystone of this construction, and its relevance to the central theme of this essay, is the controlling notion of beauty. For the Eastern tradition, the hierarchy of the divine being, grounded in the ungenerated principle of the Father, results from the beauty and splendor of the divine. For Maximus, it is the brilliance of the divine essence in the Father that produces the hypostasis of the Son as the ikon of the Father's beauty, which in turn results in the spiration of the Spirit. The beauty of the Father's being overflows, proceeding outward in continual duplication by means of the perfection of the idea or image contained in the divine mind. As the three hypostases share (koinonia) in the same essence, so they are equal in beauty and resplendence. For Edwards, beauty is the quality of the very essence of the Godhead, of the Trinity, in se .Footnote 60 Edwards argues that as “the essence of the Godhead [is] in its first subsistence”–that is, the Father–the Godhead is above all “infinitely the most beautiful and excellent . . . the foundation and fountain of all being and beauty.”Footnote 61 Beauty is the nature of God qua God, for Edwards, and is the structural characteristic of the divine being itself. Delattre notes that beauty, for Edwards, is “the first principle of being, the inner structural principle of being itself,”Footnote 62 which is located by Edwards prima facie in the divine being. In Religious Affections, Edwards identifies beauty as the defining and distinguishing principle of the divine being, and as that which, in fact, makes God who God is.Footnote 63 The perichoretic harmony ofthe divine hypostases is linked by Edwards to the constituent beauty of the divine being, in that the trinitarian persons ad intra delight in and incline towards each other in “mutual consent” on account of the glory and beauty of the Godhead.Footnote 64 The argument by Edwards in The Nature of True Virtue turns upon this notion of the regard of God for God's own being, in that the consent to being, which is primarily and fundamentally grounded in the life of the Trinity, has as its object the “excellence” of the original beauty of the divine being.Footnote 65 The inner beauty of the triune being is the root of the happiness and excellency of God's internal life, and is the suffused quality of the being itself. For Edwards, the love and delight of God in God's beauty is the foundation of God's infinite glory and the cause of God's disposition to create—it is the very ineffable and supernal mystery of God.Footnote 66 Beauty is thus the infinite energeia and causa of the divine life ad intra, and provides the structure for all being and creation, to which we now turn.
The Beauty of God as the Fount of Creation in Edwards and Maximus
For Maximus as well as Edwards, the foundation of the whole structure of creation is nothing less than the infinitely beautiful and glorious being of the triune God. Maximus understood creation to be the result of the emanation of God's fullness ad extra, the overflow from the abundant and excellent brilliance of the divine essence. For Maximus, the will of God is nothing less than the disposition of the triune being to go out of itself, to extend “well-being” to that which is other.Footnote 67 Maximus refashions the neoplatonic paradigm of procession and return in his conception of creation, in that God, in God's triune existence, overflows in creative disposition in order to reveal the image and splendor of the divine essence; the end of this process, for Maximus, is the “return” of the image to rest in the unrestricted vision of the beauty of God, an eternal stasis in beatified deification. Maximus locates the design of creation in the fecund mind and life of the Trinity, in which the beauty of God is duplicated as an idea (logos) in the eternal nous; God's will is to communicate and express the divine being for the purpose of God's own supernal glory.Footnote 68 The act of creation is thus an act of God's will, the deliberate communication of the divine idea (logos) through the emanation of God's eternal, effulgent being. Moreover, for Maximus, the structure of creation itself is undergirded by the being of God in the immanent principles (logoi) that derive from the being of God; these logoi continuously communicate the divine beauty and radiance throughout creation.Footnote 69
Edwards, in his “Dissertation on the End of Creation,” likewise grounds creation in the inner brilliance of God's being. He writes:
As there is an infinite fullness of all possible good in God, a fullness of every perfection, of all excellency and beauty, and of infinite happiness, and as this fullness is capable of communication or emanation ad extra, so it seems a thing amiable, and valuable in itself that it should be communicated or flow forth, that this infinite fountain of good should send forth abundant streams, that this infinite fountain of light should, diffusing its excellent fullness, pour forth light all around.Footnote 70
Edwards argues that the ultimate goal of God's act of creation is the communication of the divine fullness and beauty outside the Godhead, that is, that “there might be a glorious and abundant emanation of his infinite fullness of good ad extra . . . [that God would] diffuse his own fullness originally in God as a perfection of his nature.”Footnote 71 Edwards conceives of the being of God as naturally and essentially inclined or disposed to emanate ad extra, not out of contingency or necessity, but out of God's regard for God's own perfection and beauty.Footnote 72 Edwards contends that the ultimate desire of God is that the interior beauty and fullness shared by the triune Godhead be communicated and repeated, and that it be known and shared exteriorly.Footnote 73
Edwards characterizes the emanation of God's being in the act of creation as stemming from the antecedent “excellent disposition” of God to extend God's fullness and share God's being.Footnote 74 Lee understands this to be a “dispositional ontology” and argues that the essential property of God, in Edwards's theology, is the “disposition” to communicate and repeat the actual being of God; moreover, he contends that Edwards conceives of God as necessarily ontologically reproductive.Footnote 75 This is true, to a degree, in that Edwards does regard the divine design as an extension and repetition of the divine being ad extra, as the overflowing of the fullness and surplus of the divine glory and beauty. What is more striking, however, is the symmetry between the notion of disposition in Edwards and the idealism of the neoplatonism of Maximus. For Edwards, the “disposition” of the divine to emanate can be traced to the idea or image that resides in the eternal mind of God, in which God has in view an idea or image of God's own resplendent being and glory; prior to any other thing or act is God's own idea of and regard for God's own being and beauty, which is contained within that idea.Footnote 76 Creation, as the emanation of God, is brought about in and through the idea and the vision in God's mind of God's own beauty and glory. The act of creation, then, is nothing less than the communication of this particular idea, as an aesthetic delight in God's being for God's being.Footnote 77
I contend, pace Lee,Footnote 78 that Edwards's view of creation is essentially neoplatonist in the mold of the early Christian tradition. In Edwards's understanding, creation is the direct result of the expression of the eternal mind, that is, it is the communication of the image of God's being in the mind of God that causes God to diffuse God's essence ad extra . In the neoplatonic conception, the outward movement of the divine being is the source of communicative knowledge of the eternal mind, which suffuses everything.Footnote 79 Edwards, similarly, argues that creation is simply the communication of the divine mind through the emanation of the divine being, for in making God God's own end, God actively expresses God's own image in the creative act.Footnote 80 The purposive emanation of God's being, for Edwards, is the immanent communication and expression of the internal beauty and glory of the divine Triad; thus, minds and beings are created in order to receive the knowledge of the divine brilliance.Footnote 81 Edwards notes that the “divine fullness which is communicated is the divine knowledge. . . . And this knowledge is most properly a communication of God's infinite knowledge which primarily consists in the knowledge of himself. . . . ‘Tis the image of God's own knowledge of himself.”Footnote 82 In fact, this very expression of the divine knowledge leads to the return of God's beauteous image of God's self in the knowledge and contemplation of the created:
The emanation or communication of the divine fullness, consisting in the knowledge of God, love to God, and joy in God . . . has its relation to God as its fountain, as it is an emanation from God; and as the communication itself, or thing communicated, is something divine, something of God, something of his internal fullness . . . for the knowledge communicated is the knowledge of God; and so God is the object of the knowledge and love communicated. . . . In the creature's knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; his fullness is received and returned. Here is both an emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God.Footnote 83
Edwards's thought, here, parallels the neoplatonic paradigm of the procession and return of the divine, in the divine emanation ad extra and the return to the source. The divine end to which the expression of the divine knowledge strives is the resounding of the primordial divine beauty and being, in which an “other” now participates.
Edwards surmises that the participation of the creature in the glory and beauty of God, the knowledge of which is communicated to the creature, is symmetrically aligned with God's own being as God's ultimate end in the act of creation. Edwards suggests that God's ultimate regard for God's own being, beauty, and glory correlates with the subsidiary concern for the creature, in that the creature's happiness is consonant with God's own through the creature's participation in God.Footnote 84 Thus, God communicates knowledge of God's self to the creature and upholds the entire structure of creation for the consummate purpose of uniting the creature, now enlightened by divine knowledge, with the divine, so that the divine being and the brilliant beauty of the divine is all in all:
What has been said shows that as all things are from God as their first cause and fountain; so all things tend to him, and in their progress come nearer and nearer to him through all eternity: which argues that he who is their first cause is their last end.Footnote 85
Here, the argument of Lee and Marsden against a neoplatonic design in Edwards's doctrine of creation loses traction.Footnote 86 Both Lee and Marsden suggest that Edwards differentiates his construction from the view of Plotinus in that God, for Edwards, is different from the One or the Eternal Mind in Plotinus; and, additionally, that the doctrine of creation in Edwards is fully onto-relational, which, they aver, distinguishes it from the Idealist model of ideas formed in the nous of God as perfect forms of creation. In their estimation this precludes the concept of relationality. Lee further argues that the dispositional construction exists on a different plane in Edwards's thought than in that of Plotinus. This is true, to a degree, but I argue that they overlook the Christian strand of neoplatonism in Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, which resonates more profoundly with the model found here in Edwards. That this is true is readily observed in Maximus's constructive vision of God in tri-unity, in which the One is really the divine Triad, and in which the Logos is positively identified as Jesus Christ himself and symmetrically aligned with the act of creation; in which creation emerges from the fountain of God's emanating beauty, which is tied to the beatific vision or idea in the mind of God ideating God's own beauty. The created realm is thus a perfected vision of God's resplendent glory poured out onto that which is ad extra to God, and which is created by God in the Word through the Spirit, revealing an explicit trinitarian structure.Footnote 87 Additionally, Marsden's postulation that the Platonic model is devoid of relational structure, which grounds his claim that Edwards maneuvers in the opposite direction, is untenable in the light of the structure of Nyssa's and Maximus's emphasis on the purposive nature of the creation of the world according to the ideas in God's mind—in fact, for these theologians, the intentionality is explicitly relational.Footnote 88 Maximus states that the mystery of the ages, which is the mystery of creation itself, is that God intended to have a relationship with the “other” and to replicate God's beauteous knowledge of God's being in another.Footnote 89 Thus, for Edwards, just as for Maximus, God spills out God's being in intentional creation out of the fecund love of God for God's internal image and beauty, through which creation is itself brought forth from the splendor of the image and the primal glory of God.
Lastly, creation itself, for Edwards, is upheld and given “solidity” in the mind of God. Edwards notes, in his essay “Of Being,” that the solidity of the created order is the space lent to creation as it exists, is bequeathed structural maintenance, and is preserved in the consciousness of God.Footnote 90 Edwards suggests, here, that being originates and is located in the mind or consciousness of God, and that it is this property that provides the cohesive superstructure of creation (meaning that creation would collapse if it were not lodged in God's mind), and that directs the providential course of history. The upshot of this construction is that being itself is principally the communication of the divine mind to the structure of creation, which mirrors the divine consciousness. The continua creatio is, for Edwards, the continual action of the divine mind in actively upholding and renewing creation in God's consciousness, and the effusion of the Spirit, who directs the laws of the universal structure.Footnote 91 This closely resembles Maximus's understanding of the logoi of creation as consonantal laws in the mind of God, which are circum-in-scribed in creation, and which regulate movement and being as direct communications of the divine idea of creation itself. The logoi not only give structure to the creation through the ideation of God's consciousness, but effectually communicate the image of the divine and the beauty of God's mind and being to the created world.Footnote 92 In a consonant manner, Edwards contends that the divine mind communicates the beauty of God through the very structures of creation, such that beauty is located in the receptivity of the creaturely mind to perceive and sense symmetry and harmony in the world. This is the primary beauty of which Edwards writes in The Nature of Virtue : the love of beauty for beauty in itself. The primary ground of primary beauty is located in God's very being, and it is this beauty which is radiated through the mind or consciousness of God to the created world by the Spirit. Creation is situated in the midst of God's communication and expression of the effulgent beauty of the divine life, the beauty that is constitutive of the divine being itself. It is in this paradigm that the internal logic of the “Two Dissertations” coheres, in which virtue is grounded in the constructive vision of the creation of the world for the sake of God's beauty, and it is to God's beauty that humanity is drawn in the act and process of redemption.
In the End is Beauty: The Beauty of Redemption in Edwards and Maximus
The aesthetic theological vision of both Edwards and Maximus pivots on the central axis of the redemption of the world by God in Jesus Christ, as the consummate expression of God's true grace and beauty. In the incarnate descent of Jesus Christ, as the true ikon of God and the true representative of humanity, the evanescent creation is lifted up out of the mire of privation and finitude and given the gift of life and participation in the divine through Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection. In the words of Karl Barth, the descent of the Son of the God is the ascent of faraway humanity.Footnote 93 Edwards's and Maximus's aesthetic vision of the beauty of God is ineluctably bound to this central doctrine, and their aesthetic vision structures their understanding of the incarnation as the event qua event, defining and revealing God's ultimate beauty. The aesthetic design of their theological systems leads to this as the apex of God's beauty and glory communicated to the world, and it is from and to that beauty which redemption proceeds.
In Edwards and Maximus, the aesthetic shape of redemption is the replicative motif of descent and ascent, in which God deigns to become human through the assumptio carnis of the Logos, of the divine Son; as God becomes human, in the hypostatic union of divinity and humanity, without abridgment, truncation or alloy on either side, Jesus Christ takes upon himself the aberrancy of the human condition, and inters its ephemerality in his crucified flesh. The axiomatic metaphor in this theological conceit is that of the “happy exchange” (admirabilecommercium), in which the Son gives himself over in place of the fallen human, and in fact exchanges the human condition for his own, such that he not only pays the penalty in an atoning transaction, but gives and communicates to humanity his own being and righteousness as the amelioration of her moribund condition. In the descent, the Son exchanges places with the perishing human, giving his own flesh and life on behalf of hers, and in this contraposition the human is raised into transelemented (metastoicheiosis) life. The resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, in turn, seals humanity into the life of the triune God and establishes her in the path of ascendance to the community of the Trinity.
At the root, the aesthetics of redemption in the systems of Edwards and Maximus are concerned with redressing the problem of human fallenness. Maximus constructed an ontology of the human fall, according to which “Adam's free choice corrupted along with it our human nature,”Footnote 94 introducing a privation into human nature that endures through Adam's posterity. This theological rendering provided an alternative to the Origenist construct, which presumed a pre-existent descent of souls from the static presence of God, as a punitive consequence of which creation emerged. Maximus trenchantly opposed this strand of Origenism, as it assumed that souls in the beauteous presence of God could somehow become instable and “slip” out of God's presence. He contended, rather, that movement cannot precede being and that, further, the instability of creaturehood proceeds directly from the illogical decision of Adam, which inscribed sin and death into the ontological fabric of human identity. Edwards, likewise, confronted the controversial question of “original sin,” taking up the received traditional doctrine against the disputation of Arminian theologians and rationalist philosophy.Footnote 95 Edwards aligned himself with the traditional Augustinian and Calvinist position on original sin, which was fully extant in the Puritan and Post-Reformation scholastic theology of the time. For Edwards, humanity inherited a corruption of the interior composition of the human faculties, a depraved nature of heart, mind, will and body.Footnote 96 The relevance of this to our analysis of the aesthetics of redemption is that humanity in her very being, and as a whole, became so corrupted by the act of Adam as to necessitate divine intervention to recoup the enervated creation.
The point of greatest overlap between Edwards and Maximus occurs in this topos —the rescue of creation in the extension of God's own hand, now made of to take hold of drowning humanity, and to lift her up out of the dross and into ineluctable union in the life and light of the triune God. For Edwards and Maximus, the incarnation and the atoning death of Jesus Christ anchor the aesthetic dimension of redemption in the matrix of exchange within Christ's person. They re-envision salvation in terms of “aesthetic ecstasy” in the renovation of human nature (and the created order) through the intimate union of Christ's being with the world.Footnote 97 Maximus conceives of the incarnation as the consummate act of beauty, in which the Logos, who is the principle of all beauty,Footnote 98 joins the divine with the human: “God and humanity are joined together in a single embrace . . . [this is] the first and most excellent good, of which nothing more wonderful and beautiful can be conceived.”Footnote 99 Edwards, quite similarly, locates the principle of infinite excellency and beauty in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the aesthetic nature of beauty, harmony and union that flows from it.Footnote 100 In this design, for Maximus and Edwards, the Chalcedonian logic is extremely important, in that the soteriological nature of the incarnation is bound up in the undiminished nature of the divine and the human in Christ's person, as our union with God is dependent on what is transacted in him.Footnote 101 In fact, the excellency and the beauty of the incarnation itself stems from the Chalcedonian view, as for Edwards it is the distinguishing principle of God's own excellency that God would undertake this very transaction under the constraints of human flesh.Footnote 102 One may think of Gregory Nazianzen's axiomatic statement, “that which was not assumed was not healed, but that which is united to the Godhead [in the hypostatic union] is saved;”Footnote 103 for Edwards, the incarnation is the “beautifying” of humanity by God's intervening act of bringing humanity to God's self.Footnote 104
The beauty of the incarnation, further, is in the movement of Christ's act of atonement, in which the incarnation and the cross of Jesus Christ are held together in a symmetry and harmony of divine action. The atoning act of the cross is, for Edwards, the nadir of God's descent to humanity:
None in the kingdom of heaven ever descended so low as Christ did, who descended as it were into the depths of hell. He suffered shame and wrath and was made a curse. He went lower in these things than ever any other did; and this he did as a servant not only to God but to men, that he undertook to serve us and minister to us in such dreadful drudgery while we sit at meat in quietness and rest, and partake of those dainties that he serves up to us. . . .God is pleased to put greater honor upon an inferior nature, viz. the human, by causing that the head of all, and the king of all creatures, should be in human nature, and the saints in that nature in Christ to be in many respects exalted above the angels.Footnote 105
This is the fundamental conceit of the “happy exchange:” that in God's act of incarnate humiliation and atoning sacrifice, God took upon God's self the penalty of human sin, an act of utter self-abnegation, and that God thereby exchanges the human state of wrath, sin and death for a state of glory, righteousness and union. The “happy exchange” places humanity in a position of indelible union with God through Jesus Christ; as Maximus writes, it is “the ineffable union” in which humanity is placed in partnership and familial relationship with God, such that our union is harmonious with the interpenetrative nature of Christ's own hypostatic union.Footnote 106 The pivotal act of the atoning exchange on the cross opens the way for membership in God's own trinitarian life; it is the route through which, as Edwards notes, humanity becomes inducted into the “glorious community” of God's triune being.Footnote 107 The act of God in the incarnation and the cross is one of extirpation, of removing the errant principle of privation and of stamping out finitude and death, in order to give the gift of a new ontology to humanity, an ontology that is identical to God—not that human beings become in essence (ousia) the same as God, but that God, in a sense, becomes their own being. This is the goal, the telos, of redemption.Footnote 108
The conceit of this ontological union is theosis or divinization, which means principally a union in being with God. Maximus conceives of this as the drawing of humanity into union with God, which changes the essence of human beings in transfixion or transelementation in the ultimate beauty and glory of God. Yet, this concept of theosis does not posit a blending of God and humanity into each other, where all differentiation is lost. Rather, human beings are moved into a participation in God through “beholding the ultimate and ineffable beauty, which transfixes our nature as with a stamp by which we are impressed into conformity and perfection with God's image. We will participate without being restricted, being uncontainably contained [in God]. It is genuine harmony with the fullness of God who will infuse us and unite us to God's being.”Footnote 109 Edwards seems to ascribe to this understanding of theosis as the ultimate goal of union with God's being and the perfection of communion in God's glory. Edwards draws this understanding pointedly from the event of the incarnation itself:
Christ will conform his people to himself: he'll give them his glory, the glory of his person; their souls shall be made like his soul, their bodies like to his glorious body; they shall partake with him in his riches, as co-heirs in his pleasures. . . . Hereby we are brought to an immensely more glorious and exalted kind of union with God and enjoyment of him, both the Father and the Son, than otherwise could have been. For Christ being united to the human nature, we have advantage for a far more intimate union and conversation with him, than we could possibly have had if he had remained only in the divine nature. So we have been united to a divine person, can in him have more intimate union and conversation with God the Father, who is only in the divine nature, than otherwise possibly could be. Christ, who is a divine person, by taking on him our nature, descends from the infinite distance between God and us, and is brought nigh to us, to give us advantage to converse with him. So on the other hand, we, by being in Christ, a divine person, ascend nearer to God the Father, and have advantage to converse with him. This was the design of Christ to bring it to pass, that he and his Father and his people might be brought to a most intimate union and communion.Footnote 110
This is the fundamental realization and fulfillment of the thesis Edwards established in his dissertation “End of Creation,” according to which the incarnation is a mimesis of the emanation and remanation of the divine procession in creation; the apex of all things resides in the beatific vision of God and the unrestricted participation of the creature in God, which, for Edwards, “will be an act of love in God” in which humanity will “enjoy God as partaking with Christ of his enjoyment of God, for they are united with him and are glorified and made happy in the enjoyment of God as his members.”Footnote 111 According to Edwards, humanity is given the gift of participating in God and is made to share in the glory and happiness of the divine “community.” Further, Edwards shows that there is a progressive principle of union at work, in which on account of Christ's union with us in the incarnation, and on account of his atoning exchange for us, our union with God is not only possible but begins now in this life, and leads into an ever increasing state of intimate perfection, glory and enjoyment in God.Footnote 112 God, in Jesus Christ, has given to humanity the ability and the telos to experience, know and enjoy God in God's infinite beauty and glory by being made to participate and to become a part of God's eternal and beatific being-in-community.
The logic of this argument of Edwards's is that as God has extended God's very being to us in the incarnation, and as God has even taken upon God's self the transaction for human sin in the cross, God will not withhold from humanity anything, even God's own being, such that humanity will be brought in to the infinite being of God to be made one in and with God.Footnote 113 This theotic design of redemption is nothing less, for Edwards, than a movement of true beauty and grace, as the design of God's redemption reveals the beauty and symmetry of God's being in that Christ descends to the lowest point of our nature and takes on our punishment for the purpose of admitting humankind into the participation and attainment of “godhood.”Footnote 114 The whole movement of descent-ascent bespeaks a beauty and proportion, in God's descent to us and assumption of our nature in order that we should ascend and partake in God, and even more in the “happy exchange” of Christ's atonement, whereby he took on the penalty of our sin in exchange for his own righteousness. The beauty of redemption is that God takes on flesh to “beautify” humanity in the image and likeness of God's own ikon —who is the true idea and principle of God's own beauty—so that humanity is uplifted in effervescent glory to behold and be united in communion with God.
This is the brilliance of divine grace, for Edwards, and it brings into view the internal coherence of Edwards's conception of conversion. The aesthetic design of redemption underwrites the movement of human conversion through the communication of this beautiful transaction and exchange to the human mind and heart through the Spirit. This is the true nature of the assertion Edwards makes in Religious Affections that the Spirit infuses the human being with a sense and taste of the divine sweetness, such that the “peculiar work of the Holy Spirit is to communicate himself, and make the creature partaker of the divine nature, ”inculcating true spiritual affections that align with the joy and beauty of God's nature.Footnote 115 The Spirit, in fact, for Edwards, enacts and communicates the beauty and holiness of God to the creature and seals in the creature the transaction of God's grace in Jesus Christ, effectively creating in humanity a new ontology of holiness in grace.Footnote 116 The beauty of God laid out in the redemption enacted in Jesus Christ is in the interior content of the witness of the Spirit; this is the “divine and supernatural light” of the Holy Spirit, who creates an inward sense in the heart of a “new, supernatural principle of life and action . . . given immediately by God [in which] spiritual and saving conviction of the truth and reality” of “divine excellency of thing revealed in the Word of God is impressed” with the result that “its fruit [is] an universal holiness.”Footnote 117 The Spirit is here the donum of the beauty of God in Christ, and is the operative principle activating the human mind to perceive and to know the excellent beauty of the redemption of the creature. The Spirit, in its movement, impresses the mind and the heart with this sense of beauty and holiness, thus creating a “shining” effect that draws humanity to God in a foretoken of the ineluctable union in God's glory.Footnote 118 This is the meaning of Edwards's assertion in “The Mind” that God's “love to the creature is . . . according as they partake of his excellence and beauty . . . [which] is according as he communicates more or less of his Holy Spirit.”Footnote 119 The communicatory grace of God in the Spirit works to draw humanity towards the Godhead by revealing the beauty and excellency of God in God's work in Jesus Christ on the way to bringing humanity into intimate unification with the divine Trinity in the resplendency of God's glory.
I suggest that the reconceptualization of justification in Edwards turns upon the aesthetic dimension of redemption as outlined above.Footnote 120 Anri Morimoto ascribes a Catholic shape to the justification and grace in Edwards;Footnote 121 George Hunsinger likewise perceives in Edwards's theology a retreat from the doctrine of justification as defined in the Reformed tradition of Luther, Calvin, Turretin and Ames.Footnote 122 Justification in Edwards allows for the provision of reward and merit in the works of redeemed human beings, according to Hunsinger, through a notion of “congruent merit.”Footnote 123 It seems, at a glace, that Edwards follows a more Thomistic approach to the doctrine of justification by faith; yet I would argue that justification by faith in Edwards is most fundamentally an aesthetic turn within a Reformed frame. First, justification is construed by Edwards to be grounded primarily in Jesus Christ and his acts of incarnation and atonement. Edwards clearly works, in this regard, within the Reformed tradition. Second, justification proceeds, for Edwards, from the forensic grounds of Christ's positive and negative righteousness to the imputation of Christ's righteousness in the human being (viz., the effect of the happy exchange). Third, justification by faith is the ground of all human works of obedience, and the fruits of their “heavenly purchase,” such that they reprise the obedience of Christ always already performed for them—they are mimetic acts originating from their source in Christ.Footnote 124 It is in the next step that Edwards takes his most radical turn in his account of justification, and re-circuits the Reformed understanding through the appropriation and application of aesthetic categories.
For Edwards, faith itself and the works that are the products of justification are qualities of “fitness and beauty” congruous with the beauty and merit of Christ himself, and God looks upon human beings as “fitting” for reception of these qualities.Footnote 125 Justification as an eternal reward takes on an aspect of double agency in that good works and holiness derive from the imputation of Christ's merit to humans, and human works in alignment with this are received by God in a sense of excellency and beauty that belongs to both creature and Jesus Christ, such that the two become united under the primary beauty of God in Jesus Christ extended to the creature.Footnote 126 Under this extension of God's beauty in Christ, and the imputation of the merits of excellency and beauty through Christ, such that the communication of Christ to the creatures is the causal ground of their own works, Edwards can say:
I say, the believer's holiness, viewed in these circumstances, is looked upon as a beauty and excellency having in it a great moral value in the sight of God, recommending to great favor and complacence and infinite rewards, and is a secondary recommendation to and worthiness of that eternal life and happiness which Christ has promised to bestow on believers in heaven.Footnote 127
Justification and participation in God are fully consonant with the beauty and excellency of Christ's being, which, when imputed to the human, reacts in the quality of “aesthetic ecstasy” to produce beauty and excellency in the human creature, and falls out to the bestowal of reward and positive regard to the creature in symmetrical alignment with Christ.Footnote 128 As Edwards argues in Nature of True Virtue, the fundamental quality of virtue is the regard for or consent to being, particularly by the divine being, and here we can see that in justification God has consent to God's own being by perceiving God's being in the being of the creature through the imputation of Christ's merit and excellency to the creature, so that the works of the creature, in consonance with the creature's being as being united to Christ, are constituent of the being of the creature and symmetrically related to the being and works of Christ; the upshot is that God fills the office of virtue by declaring the creature righteous and justified in consequence of the creature's works as those works are grounded in Christ and Christ's beauty and excellence. Footnote 129 Edwards, here, does not impose a catholicity onto justification in the vein of Aquinas; rather, I suggest, he comes much closer to the view of Maximus and the Eastern tradition. The closeness of justification to the telos of theosisFootnote 130 in Edwards echoes the Eastern tradition. Maximus exemplifies this tradition:
The fullness of God permeates them [viz., the Spirit] wholly as the soul permeates the body, and they become, so to speak, limbs of a body, well adapted and useful to the master. He directs them as he sees best, filling them with his own glory and blessedness, and bestows on them unending life beyond imagination and wholly free from the signs of corruption that mark the present age. Through the transferal of Christ, he gives them life, not the life that comes from breathing air, not that of veins coursing with blood, but the life that comes from being wholly infused with the fullness of God . . .hence the whole man, as the object of divine action, is divinized by being God by the grace of God who became man.Footnote 131
Thus, the whole movement of redemption, from beginning to end, is the beauty of God's grace and the grace of God's beauty, which rescues perishing human creatures; the entirety of redemption is located in the ground of God's glorious being, which raises up creation to be utterly united in unending participation and union in the radiant presence and being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.Footnote 132
Conclusion
The core argument of this essay has been that Jonathan Edwards reconceptualized the dogmatic loci of Christian theology through an aesthetic lens, and that as a result his theological vision takes on a remarkable resemblance to the Eastern tradition, most closely resembling the thought of Maximus the Confessor. It cannot be suggested that Edwards in fact read Maximus, let alone that he consciously appropriated the vision of Maximus into his own thinking. A more probable explanation for their resemblance is the unique parallel between the historical milieus in which Maximus and Edwards resided. The resurgence of Platonic philosophy in Cambridge, the epistemological and moral philosophy of Locke,Footnote 133 Berkeley,Footnote 134 Shaftesbury,Footnote 135 Malebranche,Footnote 136 and Hutcheson,Footnote 137 the Cambridge Spiritual Brethren, and the writings of John Cotton were all at Edwards's disposal, and he brought them into a unique synthesis that bore striking neoplatonic and Eastern features. If Knight's proposal is correct,Footnote 138 the Spiritual Brethren and certainly Cotton had imbibed the Eastern patristics and the Platonic models appropriated by the Cambridge philosophers who make appearances throughout Edwards's notebooks. I am suggesting that a philosophical and theological line of thinking that can be traced back to Cappadocian and Eastern tradition had surfaced in Edwards's time, and that it infused the variegated sources of Edwards's thinking. Moreover, the state of theological controversy sparked similar types of theological defense and substantiation: as Maximus faced Origenism, Arianism, monophysitism, Macedonianism—controversies surrounding the definition of the person of Christ, the Trinity, creation—so also Edwards entered the dispute over Socianism, Arminianism, the Trinity, the will, and original sin. In a strange way, these two consummate theologians, though separated by over a millennium, constructed astoundingly similar bodies of theological contemplation that pivoted on the axis of God's glory and beauty.
