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The Beauty of the Redemption of the World:* The Theological Aesthetics of Maximus the Confessor and Jonathan Edwards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2008

Michael D. Gibson
Michael D. Gibson*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Extract

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.” 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. 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.”

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 101 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 45 - 76
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Copyright © President and fellows of Harvard college 2008

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References

1 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, Herrlichkeit. Eine theologische Ästhetik Schau der Gestalt (vol. 1: Schau der Gestalt; Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1961) 21–22Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 45–57. Balthasar argues, effectively, that a similar occurrence has taken place in Catholic theology, which has succumbed to a scientism stemming from the Enlightenment.

3 Ibid., 45, 69.

4 Douglas Elwood delivers an able account of Edwards's move “to neoplatonize Calvinism;” see Elwood, , The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) 91–110.Google Scholar Norman Fiering's groundbreaking monograph details much more fully the likely sources of Platonic influence on Edwards's philosophical thinking; see Fiering, , Jonathan Edwards' Moral Thought and its British Context (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981) esp. chs. 2–4.Google Scholar Janice Knight provides a highly insightful and significant reading of the thinking of Edwards's New England forerunners and the impact of the theological and philosophical thought emanating from Cambridge in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; see Knight, , Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

5 The argument of this paper will not be that Edwards is an “interpreter” of Maximus, in the sense of deliberately reviving Maximus or Eastern patristic thought (as the historical evidence does not quite bear this out; see below), but that Edwards's unique combination of Lockean-Berklean epistemology and Cambridge Platonism with Reformed theology resulted in a philosophical-theological vision that echoes Maximus. An examination of the books read by Edwards and the catalogue of titles available at Yale during the years of Edwards's education yields no verifiable evidence of Edwards's familiarity with Maximus the Confessor; see Johnson, Thomas H., “Jonathan Edwards' Background of Reading,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 28 (1930–33) 193–222.Google Scholar The bibliographic work of Irena Backus in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West (New York: Brill, 2001) indicates that Latin and Greek editions of the works of Maximus and other Eastern patristics (including the Cappadocians) were available in Europe from the turn of the eleventh century onward through numerous reprintingsGoogle Scholar; it is possible that these were read by British and Continental Reformed theologians who studied at European institutions, and certain ideas may have been transmitted through their works. It is certain that members of the Cambridge Platonist movement had direct knowledge of and facility with this tradition. The most likely, though still speculative, source of Edwards's familiarity with Eastern patristics, and in particular Maximus, aside from the Platonists, would be his reading of Peter van Mastricht and Thomas Aquinas, who were quite familiar with Maximus (and Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite); this is the contention of Amy Plantinga Pauw in her study of Edwards's trinitarian theology, The Supreme Harmony of All: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002).Google Scholar

6 In addition to the sources noted by Pauw, Knight notes the infusion of Platonist thought in the English Puritan theologians Richard Sibbes, John Cotton, John Owen, and Thomas Goodwin, who were quite significant primary theological sources for Edwards. The most convincing explanation is that Edwards drew from a wide range of sources in scholastic Catholic and Reformed literature as well as the Cambridge theology and philosophy, which itself drew from the ancient Christian and “Greek” texts; see Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts, 1–33, 109–63, 198–213. Fiering zeroes in on the philosophical angle, providing helpful detail on the intellectual background and context of “New England theology” prior to and contemporary with Edwards; see Fiering, Edwards' Moral Thought, 3–47. Brief but lucid commentary can also be found in McClymond, Michael J., “Salvation as Divinization: Jonathan Edwards, Gregory Palamas, and the Theological Uses of Neoplatonism,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian (ed. Helm, Paul and Crisp, Oliver; Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2003) 142–44.Google Scholar

7 Edwards, “Miscellanies No. 772,” in Works of Jonathan Edwards [henceforth Works], vol. 18: Miscellanies 501–832 (ed. Ava Chamberlain; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) 422. Likewise, see Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7, in Patrologia Graeca [henceforth PG] (ed. J–P Migne; Paris, 1888) 91:1072A.

8 For more extensive biographical treatment, see Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (ed. Carol Harrison; vol. 10 of The Early Church Fathers; London: Routledge, 1999); Aidan Nichols, Maximus the Confessor in Modern Scholarship (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993); Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche (Band 2.2; Vienna: Herder, 1989); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (vol. 2 of The Christian Tradition; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) 8–36.

9 Ironically in light of much modern criticism of the “imperial” face of the early church (i.e., Constantinianism), Maximus was martyred for his defense of the Orthodox (and Catholic) bishopric against imperial interference; the problem for Maximus was the attempt by the political arm of the emperor in Constantinople to appoint monothelite and monophysite bishops and clerics (to thwart the orthodox opposition to the Henotikon) and to regulate the doctrinal fabric of the church to prevent political subversion. Maximus opposed this imperial imposition upon the church precisely because it was a heretical wielding of power that was anti-Chalcedonian; in fact, attempted imperial control of the church has a lengthy history of heterodox emperors who were opposed by conciliar bishops and exarches. See Iain R. Torrance, Christology After Chalcedon (Norwich: Canterbury, 1988). For more on Maximus's life and martyrdom, see Sebastian Brock, “An Early Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor,” Analecta Bollandiana 91 (1973) 299–346.

10 The main christological battles of Maximus's era revolved around the disputed questions of the nature (physis), will (thelos) and energy/mind (energos) of the person of Jesus Christ, stemming from the turmoil of the Chalcedonian council. The heterodox theologians (those with a “mono” prefix, e.g., monophysite, monothelite, monergist) circumvented the Chalcedonian pattern of Christology, which defined the relationship between these terms as “without confusion, without change, without separation, without division.” I have subsumed these under the broad category of “Eutychean” for an easily grasped historical reference, in that Eutyches was an early theologian who regarded the infused unity of the two natures of Christ as a singular, mixed substance, so that following the incarnation there was only one nature in Christ, the above being variant strands in denoting the singular nature, mind, will and energy in the incarnate Christ. For extensive treatment of the Christological issues of the seventh century, see Bathrellos, Demetrios, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in Saint Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

11 For the documented transcripts of the public disputation of Maximus with Pyrrhus and the later trials of Maximus, see Allen, Pauline and Neil, Bronwen, Maximus the Confessor: Documents from Exile (vol. 8 of Oxford Early Christian Texts; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

12 Louth, Andrew, “St. Maximus the Confessor: Between East and West,” Studia Patristica 32 (ed. Livingstone, Elizabeth; Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 332–45Google Scholar; see also Larchet, Jean-Claude, Maxime le Confesseur, médiateur entre l'Orient et l'Occident (Paris: Cerf, 1998).Google Scholar

13 Meyendorff, John, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (New York: Fordham, 1969) 99.Google Scholar

14 Florovsky, Georges, The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century (vol. 10 of Collected Works of Georges Florovsky; trans. Raymond Miller; Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir's, 1987) 213–14.Google Scholar

15 The upshot of Maximus's position is that any theological conception of the person of Christ (in the forms iterated under the strands of “Apollinarianism”) that falls outside of the Chalcedonian pattern calls into question the possibility of the redemption of humanity. In effect, this reiterates the claim of Gregory of Nazianzus: “that which is not assumed is not healed” (Gregory, Ep . 202). Max. Conf., Ambig. 42 in PG 91:1316 D.

16 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kosmiche Liturgie. Das Weltbild Maximus' des Bekenners (2d ed.; Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1961) 483–643. See also Dalmais, Irénée-Henri, “Saint Maxime Confesseur et la crise de l'origénisme monastique,” in Théologie de la vie monastique. Etudes sur la tradition patristique (Paris: Aubier, 1961) 411–21.Google Scholar

17 I have borrowed the term “symphonic” from Cyril O'Reagan, “Von Balthasar and Thick Retrieval: Post-Chalcedonian Symphonic Theology,” Gregorianum 77 (1996) 227–60.

18 Max. Conf., Ambig. 41: “And finally the human person and the created nature are united with the uncreated through love—O! the wonder of God's love for us human beings!—showing them to be one and the same through the possession of grace, the whole creation wholly interpenetrated [perichoresas] by God, and become completely whatever God is, except at the level of being [NB, Maximus's conception of theosis here maintains an ontological differentiation between God and human at the level of being— ousias], and receiving to itself the whole of God himself, and acquiring as a kind of prize for its ascent to God the most unique God himself.” PG 91:1308C (unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine).

19 Ibid., 1076D, 1089B.

20 Max. Conf., Capitula Carit. 3.99, PG 90:1048.

21 In this, Maximus recapitulates the neoplatonic paradigm of procession and return in the act of creation, which he adopts most notably from Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite; see Ps.-Dion., Div. Nom. 1.1–3, 4.7, 9.1–10; Coel. Hier. 1.1; in PG 3:585B–589D, 701C–704D, 909B–917A.

22 Max. Conf., Ad Thalassium 2, in Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca [CCSG] 7:51; Maximus here follows Gregory of Nyssa's observations in Ora. Dom. 2, in Gregorii Nysseni Opera (ed. Werner Jaeger; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1952) 1:1137. See also Ps.-Dion., Coel. Hier. 1.1–2, PG 3:121A–B.

23 Max. Conf., Capit. Carit. 3.24–25, PG 90:1041; Ambig. 42, PG 91:1325B–C. Here Maximus appropriates the neoplatonic idea that the logos of creation is instantiated in creation through the procession of the divine hypostases in the movement of creation; see Plotinus, Enneads 1.2–3.3;also, Ps.-Dion., Coelestial Hierarchy.

24 Max. Conf., Ad Thal. 22, CCSG 7:142. Maximus states that “our human nature has no faculty for grasping what transcends nature. For nothing created is by its nature capable of inducing deification [which comes through spiritual knowledge], since it is incapable of comprehending God.” See Ps.-Dion., Div. Nom. 7.1, and Myst. Theo. 1, PG 3:865B–868B, 1000A–1001A; also, Greg. Nyss., De Vita Mos., PG 44.

25 Max. Conf., Ad Thal. 42, CCSG 7:285–89; Ad Thal. 61, CCSG 22:85–105.

26 Maximus here differs significantly from the neoplatonic tradition and from Gregory and Dionysius, who ascribe privation to the structure of creation itself on account of its differentiation from the divine; that is, lesser beings are inherently subject to privation due to incipient perfection rather than actualized perfection and being. In Origen, created beings are “fallen” prior to creation itself, and the process of creation is a movement of return to stasis (see De principiis 2.1.1). It is possible, though, to perceive in Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius an implicit doctrine of the fall in their idea of the “movement” of beings, though it is clearly more pronounced in Gregory of Nazianzus.

27 Max. Conf., Ad Thal. 60, CCSG 22:73–81.

28 Greg. Naz., Ep. 101.

29 See esp. Max. Conf., Ad Thal. 2, CCSG 7:51.

30 Max. Conf., Cap. Carit. 1.31.

31 Max. Conf., Opus. 5, PG 91:1053C–1060D.

32 Maximus writes that in the end God's “ultimate beauty will satisfy our desire. In so far as we are able we will participate without being restricted, as it were, being uncontainably contained. All our actions and every sublime thought will tend eagerly towards that end in which all desire comes to rest and beyond which they cannot be carried. For there is no other end toward which all free movement is directed than the rest found in total contemplation” [Maximus, here, is quoting Greg. Naz., Oration 21]. “For nothing besides God will be known, nor will there be anything opposed to God that could entice one to desire it. Instead, God's ineffable mystery will be made known in full, and all intellectual and sensible things will be encompassed by him” (Max. Conf., Ambig. 7, PG 91:1073D).

33 It should be noted that in Maximus, as in the whole of Orthodox tradition, the term “incarnation” is not restricted in reference to simply the birth or human existence of Jesus Christ, but includes the whole of Christ's life and work; it is therefore synonymous with the economic movement from the incarnation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. See esp. Max. Conf., Ambig. 42.

34 Ibid., 1092C, 1097B; Ambig. 8, PG 91:1104C.

35 See especially the series of essays by Edwards, “On Being,” “On Atoms,” and “On the Mind,” in Works 6:180–235. This is a central claim of the seminal work by Roland André Delattre, , Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968) 27–46., 117–47, 162–216.Google Scholar And more recently, Mitchell, Louis J., Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003) 10–28.Google Scholar

36 Edwards, “Of Atoms,” Works 6:212.

37 Edwards, “Notes on the Mind,” Works 6:354. This is directly parallel to the assertion of Gregory of Nyssa, who identifies the infinite perfection and totality of the divine being as the perfect and uncaused source of all “lower” being (Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomius 2.2). See also Nazianzus, Gregory, Orations 28.6, in Sources Chrétiennes (ed. Gallay, P.; vol. 250; Paris, 1978)Google Scholar; Augustine, De Trinitate 8.2; Max. Conf., Ambig. 10.3, 37 PG 91:1113C, 1180A. Maximus states here that God is the one perfect unmoved being. For more on Edwards's position on this subject, see Stephen R. Holmes, “Does Jonathan Edwards Use a Dispositional Ontology? A Response to Sang Hyun Lee,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, 106–10.

38 Edwards, “Misc. No. 1208,” Works 23:123.

39 Max. Conf., Ambig. 10, PG 91: 1187D–1188A.

40 Edwards, Freedom of the Will, Works 1:376; also “Misc. No. 135,” Works 13:295.

41 Edwards, “On the Equality of the Persons of the Trinity,” Works 21:147.

42 Edwards, “Misc. No. 308, 571,” Works 13:110, 393; “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 21:133.See Amy Plantinga Pauw, “One Alone Cannot be Excellent: Edwards on Divine Simplicity,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, 120–21.

43 Max. Conf., Ambig. 1, PG 91:1036B.

44 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 21:114.

45 Ibid., 119. See n. 42.

46 I take this to be the direction of Edwards's argument that “as God with perfect clearness, fullness and strength understands himself, views his own essence . . . that idea which God has of himself is absolutely himself. This representation (viz., ikon or logos) of the divine nature and essence is the divine nature and essence again. . . . And this is the second person of the Trinity . . .[who] is the eternal, necessary, perfect, substantial and personal idea which God has of himself” (ibid, 116–17). Compare Max. Conf., Capit. Theo. 3.2.2.

47 Ibid., 131.

48 Ibid., 120–21; Max. Conf., Ambig . 5, PG 91:1059C.

49 Augustine, De Trinitate 4.29, 5.12–13, 6.7, 9.5.

50 Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” Works 21:186–87. Here, Edwards makes a corollary statement concerning the holiness of God as it consists in the primary state of love: “so does the holiness of God consist in his love, especially in the perfect and intimate union and love there is between the Father and the Son. [And] the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son is the bond of this union” (ibid). See also Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 21:121, 131–38, 142–44. It is likely that Edwards follows in the line of William Ames (who, in turn, is reiterating Calvin): “The Father is, as it were, Deus intelligens, God understanding; the Son who is the express image of the Father is Deus intellectus, God understood; and the Holy Spirit, flowing and breathed forth from the Father and the Son, is Deus dilectus, God loved.” Ames, The Marrow of Theology (ed. and trans. Douglas Horton; repr. Baker, 1997) 89.

51 John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa 1.8; Gregory Naz., Orat. 20, 43, PG 35:1073A; 36:419B–C; Ps.-Dion., Div. Nam. 1–7; Max. Conf., Opus. 7.

52 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 21:137, 143. Edwards writes also, “we see how and in what sense the Father is the fountain of the Godhead, and how naturally and properly God the Father is spoken of in Scripture as of the Deity without distinction, as being the only true God.” Edwards, “Misc. no. 143,” Works 13:298–99. Compare Greg. Naz., Orat. 27; Greg. Nyssa, Cont. Eun. 2.2–5; Gregory Palamis, Triads 1.3.

53 Edwards states further that “God the Father be the first person from whom the others proceed and herein has a peculiar personal honor. . . . The Father has good, and through the Son receives the infinite good, the Holy Spirit, from the Father [and] the Father enjoys the infinite good through the Son. He is the end of the other two in their acting ad intra, and also in his acting ad extra .” Edwards, “On the Equality of the Persons of the Trinity,” Works 21:146.

54 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 21:131. In Edwards's exposition of the concept of God, he posits the Father's existence as the primordial actuality, which is to say, as true beauty; the procession of hypostases is the repetition of this beauty and the knowing of it. Edwards thus establishes the aseity of God's being in the Father's being as pure actuality and beauty and the power or disposition to know and exert or replicate; this aligns, as well, with Thomas's assertion of God's essence as his existence, and hence God's aseity as pure existence or being (Summa Contra Gentiles, book 1, ch. 22, 118–20).

55 See n. 50. Also, Vladimir Lossky, “Théologie dogmatique,” in Théologie mystique de l'Église d'Orient (Paris, 1960) 46–47, 58–60; Sergei Bulgakov, Le Paraclet (Paris, 1946) 360–75.

56 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 21:130–31, 134–36, 142–43; “On the Equality of the Persons of the Trinity,” ibid., 146–48; “Treatise on Grace,” ibid., 184–85, 187; “Misc. no. 104,” Works 13:272. See also “Misc. no. 1062,” quoted in Pauw, Supreme Harmony of All (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 110–12.

57 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” 131.

58 Max. Conf., Epistola ad Marinum, PG 91:136AB.

59 See Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678) 3.1, p. 144. See J. Deotis Roberts, From Puritanism to Platonism in Seventeenth Century England (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968). For remarks on Cudworth's influence upon Edwards's thought, see Elwood, Philosophical Theology, 40–42; Fiering, Edwards' Moral Thought, 46–49.; and, McClymond, “Edwards, Palamas, and Neoplatonism,” Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, 141–43.

60 Lee, Sang Hyun, Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) 82–85, 110–11, 176–81Google Scholar; Delattre, Roland, Beauty and Sensibility, 117, 148–61.Google Scholar

61 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 21:135.

62 Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 1–2.

63 Edwards, Works 2:298: “God is God, and distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above ‘em, chiefly by his divine beauty.”

64 Edwards, “End for which God Created the World” [End of Creation], Works 8:422.

65 Edwards, “The Nature of True Virtue,” Works 8:546–51; “Controversies,” Works 21: 325–27; see also Farley, Edward, Faith and Beauty: A Theological Aesthetic (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004) 43–48.Google Scholar

66 Edwards, “Misc. no. 1066, 1208,” Works 20:446; 23:133–34.

67 Max. Conf., Ambig. 7, PG 91:1073C, 1077C–1080D. Lars Thunberg notes that the emanation of the divine being, in bringing about creation, is grounded in the teleological goal of extending “well-being,” or divinitatis ad extra, to reproduce the divine image. See Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Crestwood: St Vladimir's, 1995) 74; Max. Conf., Centuries on Love 3.24–25.

68 Ibid., 1085B–1088C.

69 See esp. Max. Conf., Ambig. 7, 42.

70 Edwards, “End of Creation,” Works 8:433.

71 Ibid. See also Edwards, “Misc. no. 553,” Works 18:97.

72 Edwards, “End of Creation,” Works 8:440–41. Elwood ably explains Edwards's notion of the self-giving and communicating nature of God, offering several felicitous comparisons of Edwards with Hartshorne, Whitehead, Schelling and Augustine; see Elwood, Philosophical Theology, 90–112.While Elwood's discussion demonstrates keen discernment and rigor, his analysis of Edwards ultimately owes much to process theology. He does, however, bring to the fore key observations in discussing Edwards's thought in conjunction with that of Augustine and Calvin and the influence of Platonism (esp. 98–112).

73 Ibid., 462–63; “Misc. no. 669, 1208,” Works 18:282; 23:133–34.

74 Ibid., 433.

75 Lee, Philosophical Theology, 174–85.

76 Edwards, “End of Creation,” Works 8:439–441; 443–44; “Misc. no. 699”, Works 18:282;“The Nature of True Virtue,” Works 8:556–57. Edwards states, in “End,” “it is such a delight in his own internal fullness and glory that disposes him to an abundant effusion and emanation of that glory” (452).

77 Edwards, “Misc. no. 553,” Works 18:97. Edwards states, in Misc. no. 699: “The excellency of God's nature appears in that, that he loves and seeks whatever is in itself excellent. . . . And as he loves his own perfection and excellency, so he loves the effulgence or shining forth of that perfection” (282). See also Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” 103–4, 106–8 (in Helm). Compare Max. Conf., Centuries on Love, 3–4.

78 Lee, Sang Hyun, “God's Relation to the World,” in The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards (ed. Lee, Sang Hyun and Stout, Harry S.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 59–65.Google Scholar A better account is that of Fiering, Jonathan Edwards's Moral Thought, 330–40.

79 See Ps.-Dion., Myst. Theo. 1–2; Plotinus, Enneads 1.1–3.1; also E. R. Dodds, Proclus' “Elements of Theology” ([SCM] London, 1963).

80 Edwards, “End of Creation,” Works 8:431–35; “True Virtue,” ibid., 556–60.

81 Edwards, “End of Creation,” 431–33, 458–63, 528–36. Edwards states: “But [God], from his goodness, as it were enlarges himself in a more excellent and divine manner. This is by communicating and diffusing himself; and so instead of finding, making objects of his benevolence; not by taking into himself what he finds distinct from himself, and so partaking of their good, and being happy in them; but by flowing forth, and expressing himself in them, and making them to partake of him, and rejoicing in himself expressed in them, and communicated to them” (ibid., 462).

82 Ibid., 441. See also “True Virtue,” 591–92, 622–23. Compare Max. Conf., Ambig. 7: “But we say that God knows existent things as the images of his own mind and the [corresponding] acts of his will. If God made all things by the knowledge of his mind, and it is thus right to say that God knows his own will [which is in his mind], and that he made each creature by the express act of his will in his knowledge, then God truly knows existent things as he knows his own mind” (PG 91:1085B).

83 Edwards, “End of Creation,” 531.

84 Ibid., 526–36.

85 Ibid., 443–44. Note Maximus: “Because the One goes forth out of goodness in bringing in being, creating and preserving them . . . the many [viz., creation] are directed toward the One and are providentially guided in that direction. It is as though they are were drawn to an all-powerful center that had built into it the beginnings of the lines that go out from it and that gathers them all together again as their end. . . . God is the goal of everything as it is given in the beginning and the end of everything as the ultimate goal” (Max. Conf., Ambig. 7, PG 91:1081C, 1084A).

86 See Lee, Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 172; Lee, “God's Relation to the World,” 332–38.; also George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) 77–78.

87 Max. Conf., Ad Thal. 2, in CCSG 7:51. Here Maximus discloses the trinitarian structure of creation in the beginning and in the end as consonantal events that move in the direction of deified creation in the resplendent glory of the Triune God. This is substantiated by Maximus in his account of redemptive history as the transacting of this purpose: “It is on the basis of this grace that the divine Logos, becoming man, said ‘My Father is working even now, and I am working.’ The Father approves this work, the Son properly carries it out, and the Holy Spirit completes both the Father's approval of it all and the Son's execution of it, in order that the God in Trinity might through all and in all things, be contemplated as the whole reality proportionately in each individual creature, and in the universe altogether, just as the soul naturally endwells both the whole of the body and each individual part without diminishing itself.” See Max. Conf., Ad Thal. 60, CCSG 22:79, 94–105; Greg. Naz., Cate. Ora. 2.1, PG 36:100; Greg. Nyssa, Orat. 27–31. Compare Edwards: “Our dependence is equally upon each in this affair: the Father appoints and provides the Redeemer, and himself accepts the price and grants the thing purchased; the Son is the Redeemer by offering up himself, and is the price; and the Holy Spirit immediately communicates to us the thing purchased by communicating himself, and he is the thing purchased” (“Essay on the Trinity,” in Works 23:136).

88 Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 76–78. Cf. Greg. Nyssa, In Pascha I, Gregorii Nysseni Opera III:604B–617A; Cate. Ora. 37, GNO II:92D; In diem nat. Christ, GNO III:1144.

89 Max. Conf., Ad Thal. 22, CCSG 7:137–43; Centuries on Love 2–3.

90 Edwards, , “Of Being,” in A Jonathan Edwards Reader (ed. Smith, John E., Stout, Harry, and Minkema, Kenneth; Yale: Yale University Press, 1995) 10–11.Google Scholar

91 Edwards, “Misc. no. 64,” and “Misc. no. 481,” in Works 13: 235; “Misc. no. 976,” in Works 23:280–88.

92 Max. Conf., Ambig. 7, PG 91:1077C–1081C. Note, also, the resonance of Edwards's essays “On Atoms” and “On Being” with the constructive vision of Maximus on spatiality: “By space we mean that everything is shown as being in a place. For the totality of everything is not beyond the universe but being circumscribed from itself and in itself, in accordance with the infinite power of the cause that circumscribes everything, the limit itself is outside itself. And this is the place of the universe that exists in the space that God circumscribes with his being, directing their position where they are. For being is derived from God but he is beyond being itself and beyond anything that is said or conceived of him. . . . But beings possess being in a certain way so that where they are is determined by God's positioning and the natural limit of their logoi that God inscribes in them, and when they are is determined from their beginning. . . . Anyone who is convinced that God exercises providence over the things that are, from which he has learnt that he exists, will judge it right and reasonable that he is none other than the guardian of the things that are and cares for them and that he alone is the fashioner of what is. For the permanence of what is, and its order and position and movement, and the consonance of the extremities with the middle, the agreement of the parts with the wholes, and the union throughout of the wholes with the parts, and the unblurred distinction of the parts one from another in accordance with the individuating difference of each, and the unconfessed union in accordance with the indistinguishable sameness in the wholes, and the combination and distinction of everything with everything else, and the eternally preserved succession of everything and each one according to form, so that the logos of each nature is not corrupted by confusion or blurring, all this shows clearly that everything is held together by the providence of the Creator God” (Max. Conf., Ambig. 10, PG 91:1181B–C, 1188D–1189B).

93 Barth, Church Dogmatics (ed. and trans. T. F. Torrance and G. W. Bromiley; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960–1962) IV/1:§59, IV/2:§64.

94 Max. Conf., Ad. Thal. 42, in CCSG 7:285.

95 For the historical background to this question, see Clyde Holbrook's introduction to Edwards, Original Sin, in Works 3.

96 Ibid., 1.1.1–4.

97 I have appropriated the phrase “aesthetic ecstasy” from Jenson, Robert, America's Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) 17.Google Scholar Jenson's account of Edwards's theological construction under the rubric of beauty and aesthetics acknowledges the Platonic motifs, but glosses over them rather hurriedly. Jenson suggests that one could appropriately classify Edwards as a Platonic or mystical theologian but provides little explanation for this assessment (15–34).

98 Max. Conf., Ambig. 7.

99 Max. Conf., Ep. 2.

100 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 23:135–36.

101 Max. Conf., Ambig. 5; Opusc. 7.

102 Edwards, “Misc. No. 741,” Works 18:368–69.

103 Greg. Naz., Ep. 202; Max. Conf., Ambig. 5, 41.

104 Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” Works 23:128, 131–38; “Treatise on Grace,” ibid., 177–79; “Misc. no. 709,” Works 18:338–39.

105 Edwards, “Misc. no. 681,” Works 18:241.

106 Max. Conf., Ambig. 5.

107 Edwards, “End of Creation,” Works 8:431–36, 519–21; 526–37. Compare Max. Conf., Ambig. 71; Opusc. 2, 3.

108 This trajectory in Edwards's thought can be observed clearly as early as his delivery of the “Thursday Lecture” to the Boston public in 1731, published under the title “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption and the Greatness of? Man's Dependence.” Here, Edwards establishes the ultimate transformation of the human being through the soteriological imputation of the grace of Christ, in which there is a genuine “communication of God's excellency and holiness,” by which “man is made excellent and holy by being made partakers of God's holiness.” This is the meaning of “theosis” or “deification” in the discussion below. See McClymond, “Edwards, Palamas, and neoplatonism,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, 144–53.

109 Max. Conf., Ambig. 7, PG 91:1076B, 1088B.

110 Edwards, “Misc. no. 571,” Works 18:108, 110. See also “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption,” in Works of President Edwards, 4:174–75.

111 Edwards, “Sermon on Rom. 2.10,” in Works 8: 227–79; “End of Creation,” Works of President Edwards 8:531–37; “Misc. no. 678;” “Christ the Spiritual Sun,” Works 22:50–63. In “Misc. no 741,” Edwards writes: “This redemption leaves nothing to hinder out highest exaltation, and the utmost intimacy and fullness of enjoyment of God. . . . Christ was made flesh, and dwelt among us in a nature infinitely below his original nature, for this end, that we might have as it were the full possession and enjoyment of him. . . . These things imply not only that the saints shall have such an intimate enjoyment of the Son [Edwards here again repeats “ye shall be gods”], but that they, through the Son, shall have a most intimate enjoyment of the Father. Which may be argued from this, that the way that God hath contrived to bring them to their happiness, is to unite them to the Son as members: which doubtless is that they may partake with the head that they are so united to in his good” (Works 18:366–68).

112 Edwards, “Misc. no. 777,” Works 18:430; “End of Creation,” Works 8:520–25. In “Misc. 571” Edwards states: “The union is but begun in the world, and there is a great deal that remains in this world to separate and disunite them; but then all those obstacles of a close union and most intimate communion shall be removed” (Works 18:109).

113 Edwards notes in “Misc. No. 571”: “Christ has brought it to pass, that those that the Father has given him should be brought into the household of God, that he and his Father and they should be brought into the household of God, that he and his Father and they should be as it were one society, one family; that his people should be in a sort admitted into that society of the three persons in the Godhead . . . hence we see how God has confounded Satan, in actually fulfilling that which was a lie in him, wherewith he deluded poor man and procured his fall, viz. that they should be as gods ” (Works 18:110–11). Even more colorful is the statement by Edwards in “Misc. no. 741”: “He whose arms were expanded to suffer, to be nailed to the cross, will doubtless be opened as wide to embrace those for whom he suffered. He whose side, whose vitals, whose heart, was opened to the spear of his enemies to give access to their malice and cruelty, and to let out his blood, will doubtless be opened to admit the love of his saints” (370). . . . “[T]here will be no happiness too much for them. God won't begrudge anything as too good for them. There will be no restraint to his love, no restraint to their enjoyment of himself; nothing will be too full, too inward and intimate for them to be admitted to” (372).

114 Edwards, “Misc. no. 741,” ibid., 369. Edwards in this entry repeats the statement “they shall be gods.” See also Edwards, “End of Creation,” Works 8:519–21, 533–36.

115 Edwards, Religious Affections, Works 2:180–81 [italics mine]. Compare. Max. Conf. Ambig. 42, where Maximus discusses the communication of the principle [logos] of God's beauty to the human mind through “the grace of the Spirit.”

116 Edwards, Religious Affections; idem., A Divine and Supernatural Light, Works 17: 400–2. In Misc. no. 537, Edwards writes: “There is no gift or benefit that is so much in God, that is so much of himself, of his nature, that is so much of a communication of the Deity, as grace is; ‘tis as much a communication of the Deity, as light is a communication of the sun. . . . God's creatures, the sun, moon and stars, etc., are his own; but with more eminent reason, that which is so nearly pertaining to the very nature of God, as his grace, the actings and influences of his own Spirit, the communications of his own beauty and his own happiness, God will therefore make his sovereign right there more eminently to appear, in the bestowment of this.” Works 18:82–83. Compare Max. Conf., Ambig. 42; Centuries on Love, 6, 7.

117 Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light in Works 17:410–13, 423–24. Edwards writes in “Misc. no. 782: “Saving conviction of divine truth does most essentially arise from the spiritual sense of the excellency of divine things. Yet this sense of spiritual excellency is not the only kind of ideal apprehension, or sense of divine things, that is concerned in such a conviction, but it also partly depends on a sensible knowledge of what is natural in religion, as this may be needful to prepare the mind for a sense of its spiritual excellency, and as such a sense of its spiritual excellency may depend upon it. For as the spiritual excellency of the things of religion itself does depend on and presuppose those things that are natural in religion—they being as it were the substratum of this spiritual excellency—so a sense, or ideal apprehension, of the one, depends in some measure on the ideal apprehension of the other. Thus a sense of the excellency of God's mercy in forgiving sin, depends on a sense of the great guilt of sin, the great punishment it deserves. A sense of the beauty and wonderfulness of divine grace, does in great measure depend on a sense of the greatness and majesty of that being whose grace it is, and so indeed a sense of the glory of God's holiness and all his moral perfections. A sense of the excellency of Christ's salvation, depends on a sense of the misery and great guilt of those that are the subjects of this salvation. And so, though a saving conviction of the truth of the things of religion does most directly and immediately depend on a sense of their spiritual excellency, yet it also in some measure, and more indirectly and remotely, depends on an ideal apprehension of what is natural in religion. . . . [Human beings are] given a sense of Christ's divine excellency, and so of the glorious dignity of his person, and what he did and suffered for sinners; hereby their eyes are opened to see the perfect fitness . . . this excellent congruity which powerfully convinces them of the truth of the gospel . . . which they now see to be so congruous . . . it is a divine contrivance, and that there is acceptance to be had with God in this. . . . The sight of this congruity convinces the more strongly [of] the excellent wisdom, holiness and justice of God's beautiful design” (18:465–66).

118 Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” Works 23:188–91, 194–99.; see note 84 for Maximus.

119 Edwards, “The Mind,” Works 6:364.

120 Due to the scope of this essay, I will only offer preliminary remarks here as a way of tying up this presentation. A full length essay dedicated to this particular issue is forthcoming.

121 Morimoto, Anri, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995) 41–69.Google Scholar

122 George Hunsinger, “Dispositional Soteriology: Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone,” Westminster Theological Journal 66 (2004) 107–20. It should be noted that Hunsinger does not suggest that Edwards takes up a Catholic position, but only that Edwards's technical treatment in the treatise involves a “softening” of focus in opening up the “double ground” of justification in the forensic aspect of Christ and the works of human beings. Hunsinger's analysis is rigorous and dense, and as his student it is with utmost respect that I acknowledge my indebtedness to his analysis. However, my argument here is that the aesthetic dimension in Edwards's thought adds further complexity to his work. An early analysis of Edwards's innovation of thought on justification is the study of Thomas Schafer, “Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Faith,” Church History 20 (1951) 55–67.

123 Ibid., 108. Edwards writes: “If we take works as acts or expressions of faith, they are not excluded; so a man is not justified by faith only, but also by works, i.e., he is not justified only by faith as a principle in the heart, or in its first and more immanent acts, but also by the effective acts of it in life, which are the expressions of the life of faith” (Works 19:236).

124 Edwards, “Misc. No. 27b,” Works 13:214.

125 Edwards, “Justification by Faith,” Works 19:154–56.

126 Ibid., 213–15, 236.

127 Edwards, “Controversies' Notebook: Justification,” Works 23:367. Edwards also states in “Misc. no. 793”: “Believers may be heirs of eternal life prior to their good works. They may have a right by Christ's righteousness received by faith that may be prior to any regard to anything in them as a good work, or any virtue or lovely qualification in them; and yet it may be the pleasure of God to bestow heaven upon them in that way, voz. in reward for their good works, as lovely to God in Christ. . . . So believers being heirs as children (which they are by the righteousness of Christ) is the reason that God appoints them to obtain heaven in a way of good works, which God has before ordained that they should walk in them” (18:493).

128 Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” 23:175; “Controversies' Notebook: Justification,” 23:359.

129 Edwards, “Justification by Faith,” 19:155–59, 211–13, 216.

130 This is most aptly demonstrated by the entry of Edwards on justification (Misc. No. 893): “On account [of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to believers] this shows the exceeding happiness of the saints in glory. . . . The saints are glorified in reward of the righteousness of God. Therefore the saints shall be brought nearer to God, and to vastly higher degrees of union with him, and more excellent enjoyment of his love, even to a participation of the Father's love to the Son” (20:153).

131 Max. Conf., Ambig. 7, PG 91:1088B–C.

132 Edwards, “End of Creation,” 8:530–36.; Note “Misc. no. 957”: “The eternal heaven is nothing so but the divine nature itself. The only heaven that is unalterable is the state of God's own infinite and unchangeable glory . . . the eternal abode of the blessed Trinity, and of the happiness and glory they have in one another. . . . The Son being thus glorified with infinite sweetness by the light of the countenance of the Father, the glory will be communicated from him to his bride, and she shall be transformed into his image by beholding him, or by his sweet shining and smiling upon her. . . .The beams of the Son's new glory of grace and love shall advance the whole world to new glory and sweetness. Thus Christ and his saints both shall receive their consummate felicity and full rewards, and shall begin the eternal feast of love, the eternal embraces” (23:214–15; compare Max. Conf., Ambig. 42). One important question that I have left unaddressed is the extent of redemption. On the one hand, Edwards clearly follows in the Augustinian and Calvinist tradition in his doctrine of election, and quite trenchantly articulates a notion of eternal punishment. On the other hand, the logic of his essay “End of Creation” and the implications of his theological aesthetics raise the possibility of a proto-universalism. Michael McClymond has made note of this particular implication in “End of Creation” in Encounters with God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) 62–63; see also Gerald McDermott, “Jonathan Edwards, John Henry Newman and non-Christian Religions,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, 127–38. See also McDermott's masterful Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-Christian Faiths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 110–48. Additionally, John Wilson calls attention to the tendency toward universalism underlying Edwards's argument in his unfinished work “History of Redemption” (see Works 9:69). Wilson argues that a “tacit” universalism runs through Edwards's writings on redemption, without becoming overt or explicit. Interestingly, this accords with the nature of apokatastasis (the return of all things) in Maximus, which is an Eastern doctrine of universalism; Maximus is never explicit in his treatment of redemption, but there is an intonation that closely aligns with this doctrine. See Brian Daley, “Apokatastasis and Honorable Silence in the Eschatology of Maximus the Confessor,” Paradosis 27 (1980) 309–39.

133 See Fiering, , Edwards' Moral Thought, 14, 22–23, 30, 35–40.Google Scholar See also Holmes, , “Does Jonathan Edwards Use a Dispositional Ontology?” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, 99–103.Google Scholar Additionally, see Wainwright, William J., “Jonathan Edwards and the Language of God,” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48 (1980) 519–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

134 Ibid., 15, 51, 65–66. See also Elwood, Philosophical Theology, 169.

135 Ibid., 7, 15, 23, 64–65, 108. See also Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 26, 196.

136 Ibid., 40–44, 51–52, 93–94, 341–45. See also Oliver Crisp, “How Occasional was Edwards' Occasionalism?” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, 65–66; and, Elwood, Philosophical Theology, 171. A good overview on this source of influence upon Edwards's thought is located in Mason I. Lowance, “Jonathan Edwards and the Platonists: Edwardsean Epistemology and the Influence of Malebranche and Norris,” in Studies in Puritan American Spirituality 2 (1992) 129–51.

137 Ibid., 7, 9–10, 136–37, 144–46, 256–57. See also Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility, 23,194–96.

138 See nn. 5–7.