I recently came across an informative essay by Peter J. Leithart entitled, “Trinitarian Anthropology: Toward a Trinitarian Re-casting of Reformed Theology,” and wanted to share some of Leithart’s findings [1]. Having spent a good deal of time this summer reading von Balthasar, I was struck by the amazing similarity between Balthasar and Edwards in their thinking on the Trinity and beauty.

In the second section of his essay, Leithart turns to Jonathan Edwards and highlights the fecundity of Edwards’ Trinitarian theology. Beginning with Edwards’ treatment of God’s self-communication and love, Leithart points out Edwards’ Augustinian influenced belief that God is love implies a plurality of persons within God. As Edwards explains, “[t]hat in John God is love shows that there are more persons than one in the deity, for it shews love to be essential and necessary to the deity so that his nature consists in it, and this supposes that there is an eternal and necessary object, because all love respects another that is the beloved” (p. 61) [2]. God of course has no need to express his love outside of the Trinitarian relations and in no way comes to self-actualization through creation. Yet, the eternal self-giving among the Persons of the Trinity is the archetype for creaturely self-giving and is the background for God’s self-communication to His creatures. Turning again to Edwards we read, “[a]s 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” (p. 61) [3].

Leithart goes on to say that in addition to Edwards’ emphasis that “God as Trinity was inherently communicative, inherently loving, inherently ecstatic,” he also speaks of this pattern as “imprinted on the creation. Creation as a whole, and the divine-human relationship in particular, are echoes of the eternal music of Triune life. Emanation is inherent in the Trinitarian life: The Father outflows in love to the Son, and the Son returns to love the Father in the Spirit. And so it is with the creatures of this God” (p. 62). As Edwards puts it, “in the creature’s knowing … loving … and praising God, the glory of God is both … received and returned. Here is both emanation and remanation” [4]. In light of her union with Christ her Husband, the Church as bride participates “in the eternal flow of gift and return that is the Son’s life with the Father and Spirit” (p. 62). Redemption then is to be understood as social and interpersonal—a harmony manifest between the Triune persons and His people (which images the archetypal Triune Harmony) and a harmony among the people of God in their interpersonal relationships with one another. At this point Leithart turns to Edwards’ use of musical analogies in his explications of ecclesiology, eschatology, history and creation, noting their Trinitarian echoes and inspiration. As Robert W. Jenson has noted in his work on Edwards, singing serves as metaphor of choice for Edwards’ aesthetic descriptions [5]. For example, Edwards gives the following musical analogy for his idea of a societas in harmonia, “[t]he best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is music. When I would form an idea of a society in the highest degree happy, I think of them sweetly singing to each other.” As Leithart observes, this perfect harmony awaits its eschatological fulfillment in the new creation, where, as Edwards says, the “spiritual proportion” will be a “very complex tune, where respect is to be had to the proportion of a great many notes together” (p. 62) [6].

Leithart then connects Edwards ideas of harmony with his Calvinistic belief that all creation is providentially guided and directed to its telos. “In explicit polemic against the Newtonian view of dead matter in empty space, Edwards spoke instead of creation as a place of harmony, where ‘the whole course of nature … [is] subservient to the affair of redemption.’ Indeed, ‘Every atom is managed by Christ … [7] This is ultimately an ontology (or “physics”) of love, in which gravity is conceived on the model of Trinitarian attraction and difference” (p. 62).

Lastly, Leithart fleshes out the various ways in which Edwards’ Trinitarian ontology founds his theological aesthetics. Beauty and excellence form centerpieces in Edwards’ view of aesthetics, yet these are defined in Trinitarian terms. According to Edwards, it is impossible for one alone to be excellent because “in such case, there can be no consent [i.e., harmony]. Therefore, if God is excellent, there must be a plurality in God; otherwise, there can be no consent in him” (p. 63) [8]. This musical image of “consent,” that is, harmony, is at the heart of Edwards’ theological (and explicitly Trinitarian) aesthetics. As Leithart explains, “[w]ithout a plurality of persons in God there would be no harmony because there would be no difference, and there would be no beauty because harmony is the keynote of beauty. Edwards concedes that simplicity can have a beauty, but he sees that as beauty of a very limited sort. By contrast, when ‘thousands of different ratios at once … make up the harmony,’ the beauty produced is ‘far the sweetest’” (p. 63) [9]. Summing up Edwards’ view, Leithart writes, “love is not love without an object, and therefore God’s eternal love implies some eternal plurality in his being. Similarly here, since beauty consists in love, beauty depends on the Trinitarian nature of God. Without a harmony of difference, a harmony of Father, Son, and Spirit, there would be no beauty in God” (p. 63). How’s that for a little theologizing with a hammer (or better with a finely tuned surgical tool) so as to re-configure the frozen image of Edwards the Puritan whose only contribution to theology was that ghastly sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Hats off to Leithart!

Notes

[1] Leithart’s essay is found in The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros and Cons: Debating the Federal Vision. (Fort Lauderdale: Knox Theological Seminary , 2004): 58-71.
[2] As cited in Amy Plantinga Pauw The Supreme Harmony of All: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 37.
[3] Ibid. , p. 85.
[4] Ibid. , p. 41.
[5] The citations that follow are Leithart’s and are taken from Robert W. Jensen, America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards. Oxford: OUP, 1988.
[6] Ibid., p. 20.
[7] Ibid. , p. 43.
[8] As found in Pauw, The Supreme Harmony of All , p. 58.
[9] Ibid., p. 83.