King Beauty of the Lord

Theology as Aesthetics
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68359-059-0
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 424 Seiten

Reihe: Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology

Why is God's beauty often absent from our theology? Rarely do theologians take up the theme of God's beauty-even more rarely do they consider how God's beauty should shape the task of theology itself. But the psalmist says that the heart of the believer's desire is to behold the beauty of the Lord. In The Beauty of the Lord, Jonathan King restores aesthetics as not merely a valid lens for theological reflection, but an essential one. Jesus, our incarnate Redeemer, displays the Triune God's beauty in his actions and person, from creation to final consummation. How can and should theology better reflect this unveiled beauty? The Beauty of the Lord is a renewal of a truly aesthetic theology and a properly theological aesthetics.

Jonathan King (Ph.D., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)is a lecturer in Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Universitas Pelita Harapan in Indonesia.

Autoren/Hrsg.

King, Jonathan

Leseproben

2 Beauty Triune The foundation for our christological contours of beauty begins with the doctrine of God. To recall from the Introduction, the constructive development of this project involves a biblical-theological characterization of God’s beauty—notably in and through God the Son—as it is reflected economically in the phases of creation, redemption, and consummation. The distinct conceptual content of beauty that applies to the beauty of God manifested economically is what I had set out in our classicist theory of beauty in the Introduction. Our theological aesthetic of the doctrine of God and christological contours of beauty overall will therefore be concordant with our theory of beauty. Since the focus of my argumentation here is trained on the relation of beauty to God, it is necessarily limited in its scope and more in the way of a proposed theological aesthetic model. I am assuming upfront a doctrine of God fully consistent with Nicene Trinitarianism, and thus the development of our theological aesthetic will be in ways fully consistent with that. Additionally, the featured theologians in this chapter are Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, Herman Bavinck, and Karl Barth. The contributions of all four theologians to the subject of divine beauty are especially relevant to the theological aesthetic of the doctrine of God that I am putting forward, and to a fair extent this chapter constructively appropriates and engages their ideas. As a first order of business, then, I will summarize their respective positions on divine beauty, and will engage with various aspects of their theology accordingly throughout the rest of this chapter, and to lesser degrees in succeeding chapters. The interest of this chapter is to put forward a theological aesthetic model of the doctrine of God, and notably with respect to God the Son, that will serve as the properly dogmatic (i.e., Trinitarian) ground for the constructive argument set forth in the subsequent chapters. My argumentation here in regard to the doctrine of God is developed in five main sections as follows: 1.Beauty—A Divine Attribute? First, I present how the beauty of God is most basically associated in Scripture with God’s glory. In consideration of beauty as a divine perfection, the doctrine of divine simplicity, I argue, provides a systematic theological way to disambiguate how beauty relates to the other attributes. 2.The Relation between Beauty and God’s Glory. I define the theological relation between God’s glory and beauty. First, I set out what is meant or entailed by the glory of God expressed in his outward works (ad extra) and the glory of God in himself (ad intra). Following that I define the relation of God’s glory to the objectively real aspect of God’s extrinsic beauty. 3.The Relation between Beauty and God’s Beatitude. I address the subjectively experienced aspect of God’s extrinsic beauty, arguing that a theological aesthetic relation exists between beauty and God’s beatitude. First, I set out what is meant or entailed by God’s beatitude. Following that I clarify the relation of God’s beatitude to beauty. Based on that relation, I draw together the fuller connection of transcendental truth, goodness, and beauty to the working of the Trinity ad extra. 4.The Immanent Form of the Godhead’s Beauty. I define the immanent form of the Godhead’s beauty, which is developed from our preceding argumentation for divine beauty and God’s fullness of being as the Trinity of persons. 5.The Fittingness of God the Son as Incarnate Redeemer. Our Trinitarian account of aesthetics centers on the theological claim at the heart of this project’s overall constructive argument, namely, that the Son’s fittingness as incarnate Redeemer is displayed in Scripture as being fundamental to the design and outworking of God’s eternal plan. The aesthetic notion of fittingness plays a critical role in my argumentation. First, I argue that all Trinitarian action in the divine economy is fittingly performed from the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. Following that I lay out three theologically significant ways the Scriptures attest to how the theodramatic fittingness of the Son has correspondence to the symmetrical nature of his agency in the work of the divine economy. Lastly, using Anselm and Aquinas as my guides, I consider the concept of fittingness in regard to the persons of the immanent Trinity, focusing in on the immanent fittingness of the Son. THEOLOGIANS’ POSITIONS ON DIVINE BEAUTY ANSELM OF CANTERBURY ON DIVINE BEAUTY Anselm works out his doctrine of God from metaphysical principles influenced largely by and consonant with Augustine’s: God is what he possesses in all the highest perfections. Each positive good on the creaturely plane of reality, beauty included, is carried to its highest perfection in God.1 For Anselm, these divine perfections are neither constituent qualities or quantities of God’s being, nor is there any contradiction internal to God between coextensive “supremes.” The supreme nature just is all of them. An entailment of this is that the full compass of redemptive-history in which God’s plan and purposes are fully realized involves an aesthetic expression of God’s own nature, for God and his ways are wholly beautiful. Anselm gives expression to this basic idea in Proslogion chapter 17, affirming the harmony and beauty integral to God’s nature: “For you have these qualities in you, O Lord God, in your own ineffable way; and you have given them in their own perceptible way to the things you created.”2 Moreover, the aesthetic nature of God provides the proper “optics” through which to describe sin and evil, while vindicating God from being its author. The harmony of the cosmos itself is served by the principle of contrariety. As Frank Burch Brown points out in regard to the disorder, disharmony and ugliness brought about by evil, “Anselm says only that any ugliness in the order of things would ultimately be intolerable to God; and because hell is designed to remedy [i.e., rectify] the ugliness of sin, he implies—without stating it outright—that hell should be seen as in some way beautiful.”3 The underlying premise is that hell is designed to rectify the ugliness of sin by way of divine justice being fully vindicated. Basic to Anselm’s understanding of the divine nature is the concept of fittingness. In Cur Deus Homo 1.3, for example, fittingness is a defining characteristic of the aesthetic aspect of redemption, seen in the evident symmetry entailed in its outworking: And it was fitting that the devil, who through the tasting of a tree defeated the human being whom he persuaded, should be defeated by a human being through the suffering on a tree that he inflicted. And there are many other things that, if carefully considered, demonstrate the indescribable beauty that belongs to our redemption, accomplished in this way.4 The redemptive-eschatological structure of the divine plan will be perfected in unity and symmetry, for only in this way will God’s ultimate purposes in creation and redemption be perfectly fitting. This is demonstrated in the aesthetic unity in which all things are governed and brought to their ultimate completion. Even the exact number of angels who fell irreparably through sin will be replaced in corresponding proportion from the redeemed lot of humanity, since “it was God’s plan to replace the fallen angels from out of the human race” for that heavenly city that awaits.5 THOMAS AQUINAS ON DIVINE BEAUTY Like Anselm, Aquinas considered beauty a divine perfection as well, though his formulations to a considerable extent are the fruit of having worked out the Pseudo-Dionysian conceptions of beauty in a scholastic climate now warmed up to Aristotelianism.6 For Aquinas, beauty is an attribute of God’s being, which itself is the primal cause of the created order of all things.7 And flowing from the fullness of God’s being—i.e., the plenitude of his perfections—is the free participation of all created beings in the fullness of God’s beauty (supersubstantiale pulchrum), which is the fount of all the beautiful. Aquinas thus writes in his commentary on the Divine Names of Dionysius, “The beauty of the creature is nothing else than the likeness of the divine beauty participated in things.”8 Although Aquinas’ system begins with God as the first cause of being and the fullness of being, “it is clear,” Francis Kovach explains, “that the basis of Thomas’ theory of the essence of beauty rests on observations of an impressively broad scope and on the employment of the principle of the analogy of being.”9 From this Aquinas posits three formal criteria of beauty: proportion or consonance (proportio sive consonatia), integrity or wholeness (integritas sive perfectio), and clarity or splendor (claritas sive splendor).10 For Aquinas, proportion as an essential...