Spiritual Aesthetic Capacity

Spiritual Aesthetic Capacity

Outside Reading: Belden Lane/Ravished By Beauty

November 21, 2015

Jonathan Edward’s greatest contribution to the canon of historical theology is his idea of a new “spiritual sense,” graciously received in salvation. Edward’s theology of aesthetics was birthed by the beauty he beheld in the Connecticut River Valley. In his Religious Affections, the theologian of beauty states that “God is God, and distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above them, chiefly by his divine beauty.” According to Edwards, the essence of salvation is being awakened to a new aesthetic capacity. Just as man has physical senses - taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing - so there exists a sixth sense; a spiritual sense that has been dulled by sin. If Christ Himself is the sun, creation is the ray of light that emanates from it. God chooses to communicate and express himself through longing. Moreover, it is the nature of beauty to share, bind, and celebrate itself. God reaches out to share himself, through creation, not because he is deficient in himself. Rather the fact of God’s completion is the grounds for his reaching out. God chooses to communicated through creation. The reason God chooses to extend himself through creation, Lane says, is because “a perfection that elicits rejoicing is always superior to a perfection left to itself alone.”(175) Praise, adoration, rejoicing, pleasure, and delight seem to add to the Being of it’s object. God is intensely dedicated to the celebration of his own glory. However, this strong love of self does not make God a selfish deity. Instead, he shares his glory with creation.