God’s objective beauty and its subjective apprehension in Christian spirituality

Abstract

The topic of God’s beauty, while receiving attention in theological aesthetics, is not often a focused pursuit in Christian spirituality. The study attempts to answer the question of what the nature would be of an Evangelical Protestant Christian spirituality predicated upon seeking and apprehending God’s beauty. The study establishes the relevance of beauty to Christian spirituality. It then develops a definition of God’s beauty from Jonathan Edwards. God’s beauty is found to be his love for his own being. Examining Scripture and Christian history, the study establishes that God’s beauty was regarded as an objective reality until the Enlightenment. The focus of the research then turns to the subjective apprehension of beauty, and examines the methodology of pursuing beauty in art, and finds parallels in spirituality. The study considers the epistemological dichotomy of subject and object with reference to beauty, and considers Christian proposals for a form of correspondence theory for transcendentals. The findings are united in a model of spirituality. Apprehension of God’s beauty occurs through the subject possessing a correspondent form of God’s love. Findings from the aesthetic and epistemological study are united with theology to suggest that this love can be cultivated through four areas: Christian imagination, an implanted new nature, the exposure to communion with God, and the nurture of spiritual disciplines. Each of these areas is explained and justified as means to cultivate correspondent love. The postures and approaches found in the study of art and epistemology are used for explaining the nature of correspondent love. Evangelical Protestant Christian spirituality predicated upon seeking and finding God’s beauty is one which cultivates love for God that corresponds with God’s own love.