Picture: Miguel a Padrinan – Pexels

This is the fourth post in a series considering Beauty. So far we’ve described the journey in this way: There is a ‘Cycle of beauty that begins with the Lord, extends to creation, takes personal bodily form in Christ, is displayed corporately by the Church, culminates in heaven.’ (Strachan, 72). But there’s also another way of thinking about the journey – and that’s how we as beholders come to appreciate beauty. As we saw in the previous post, God introduces us to beauty from the physical world, through the things we see and appreciate. And then he begins to move us further on as we realise that our longings for beauty are not satisfied by those physical things. Where is it that he moves us to? The deeper beauty of relationship.

A good analogy is in marriage. Writing as a man: It may be that some men marry a woman mainly because they find her physically beautiful. But a marriage that starts there will only last and be healthy if he learns to go beyond that – to see the internal beauty and to experience the relational beauty.  

A deeper beauty

There are two aspects to this deeper beauty to consider:

Deeper beauty in relationship

We saw in previous posts that Jonathan Edwards distinguished between secondary beauty (the beauty of creation) and the more fundamental primary beauty, which for Edwards is ‘Consent or agreement between spiritual beings.’

So for example he writes this:

This is a universal definition of excellency (beauty): the consent of being to being… The more the consent is, and the more extensive, the greater the excellency.

The Mind

When we spoke of excellencies (beauty) in (physical) bodies we were obliged to borrow the word ‘consent’ from spiritual things. But excellence in and among spirits is, in its prime and proper sense, being’s consent to being.

The Mind

What does Edwards mean by ‘consent’? He’s not referring to the minimum commitment that we mean today when we refer to ‘the age of consent’ and so on. He means the exact opposite – a maximal relationship of commitment, delight and unity. And the highest form of consent is love. Edwards writes:

All the primary and original beauty or excellence that is among minds is love, and into this may all be resolved that is found among them.

The Mind

So beauty is love, properly defined. Love properly defined is beautiful. So it’s not surprising that in our present age the devil has done all he can to undermine and redefine the concept of love: For if we don’t know what love is we don’t know what real beauty is – the beauty that we long for.

I have previously defined love as:

Happy, joyful, other-focused, faithful, sacrificial, active, life-giving, overflowing.

What is love?

And we can say more about relational beauty, because there are different aspects to it, as we saw in the second post of this series. For example, unity, symmetry, proportionality, harmony – all are constituent parts of what makes something beautiful. So a relationship between spiritual beings can also be a relationship of harmony, unity and so on.

Take unity for example. Edwards writes this:

Union is one of the most amiable things that pertains to human society; ‘tis one of the most beautiful and happy things on earth, which indeed makes earth most like heaven.

An humble attempt

Deepest beauty in the Trinity

The love relationship within the life of the Trinity is the most beautiful thing that exists. As we consider this we are truly on holy ground. There is much we cannot fully understand. John’s gospel is a great place to discover the love relationship of the Trinity – and in particular John 5 and John 17.

Love

In John 17 Jesus the Son talks about the love of the Father for him at the end of the chapter:

Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me… I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.

John 17:23, 26

The Father loves the Son, he has always loved the Son. Elsewhere we can read of the love of the Son for the Father (for example John 14:31).

Unity

Notice as well the unity that exists between Father and Son:

…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you

John 17:21

Other-focus

And notice the other-focus of the Son and the Father:

Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you…I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

John 17:1, 4-5

The Son has glorified the Father – showing people how wonderful the Father is. And now the Son is asking the Father to glorify him, so he might glorify the Father again. We see again in verse 24 that the Father wants the Son’s glory.

The Holy Spirit

Where does the Holy Spirit come into this? For Jonathan Edwards the Holy Spirit is beauty, just as the Holy Spirit is love:

For Edwards, God’s Holy Spirit is beauty. For Edwards, beauty is not so much a thing or an idea as it is a divine person in relation. Beauty has a personal identity.

Louis Mitchell

The beautiful love between Father and Son is so intense that it is a person – the person of the Holy Spirit.

Three and one

And of course the Trinity is three persons, one God. And in the Trinity we see all the aspects of beauty we referred to in the second post. For example

  • We see unity between Father and Son in the bond of the Spirit – one God.
  • We see the symmetry of three persons, the Son being the Word who is the image of the Father, the Spirit being the love between Father and Son personified;
  • We see the harmony of 3 persons operating with one purpose.

As we gaze on the Trinity – which Christians will do for eternity – we see ultimate beauty. God the Trinity is the source of beauty; the sun from which all sunbeams derive. This is what we were made to reflect and enjoy above all other things. And this is what, if we’ve repented and believed, we will reflect and enjoy and become more part of for all eternity.

How we enjoy and enter this beauty now

In a previous post we considered these words of CS Lewis:

We do not want merely to see beauty… We want something else, to be united to the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

CS Lewis, Weight of Glory

And it’s possible to see God’s beauty and become part of it. The apostle Paul writes:

We all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

In other words, as we come to God in humility, repentance and faith, the Holy Spirit opens our spiritual eyes and enables us to see beauty in spiritual reality. And as we see that beauty, primarily through seeing Christ revealed in Scripture, we are increasingly transformed into the likeness of the beautiful God we worship – and so we become more beautiful. (See also 1 John 3:1-3.)

And if beauty is love then the particular way in which we are transformed is that we are increasingly loving, and increasingly ‘other-focused’ – more concerned with God and other people than with ourselves. As we grow in that regard we become more beautiful, and our relationships become more beautiful.

Let’s begin to think now about the contexts in which we are transformed to be more loving and therefore more beautiful:

Personally

As we make use of the means of grace so we see more of God’s beauty and are increasingly conformed to it.

Church community and corporate worship

Our church community can grow more beautiful as individually and together we are transformed into the likeness of the Trinity. This is what gospel culture is all about – becoming more beautiful as a church community.

As part of our church community there’s corporate worship. As we gaze on the beauty of God as we sing, as we hear his word – so we are transformed into his likeness individually and corporately.

Unity in the wider church

We’ve seen that unity is one aspect of beauty. The Trinity is one. Jesus prays that the church would be one (John 17:21-23). The Father and Son are united; and Jesus wants his followers to be united because that reflects the unity of the Father and the Son. And as they are united the world will see that they have been sent by God.

Unity is beautiful; disunity is ugly. But notice it has to be unity built on the truth:

Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth… I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.

John 17:20

There is a kind of forced unity which is also ugly. We see this in Genesis 11 with the building of the Tower of Babel. Humanity unites in rebellion against God – to make a name for themselves. Any attempts at unity based on human wisdom and strength are ugly and doomed to fail. Real unity is not forced – it is voluntary and beautiful.

Beauty of order among peoples

Because of his understanding of the end times Jonathan Edwards also believed that the whole world order could become more beautiful. He was a post-millennialist which means that he believed human society would progressively improve until heaven was ushered in. Whether or not we agree with that we can certainly say there have been times when a nation or a group of nations have been more beautiful.

And the two aspects of beauty he emphasises in this regard are unity and order. We haven’t thought much about order so far but it’s not hard to see that this also contributes to beauty: A society that is well ordered is more beautiful than a society where there is anarchy. Heaven will be an ordered society with Christ as the head (Ephesians 1:10). And of course, however much this beauty is realised in the present age, it will be perfectly realised in the age to come, when God’s people are with him, gazing on him in perfect joy forever.

Seeking to be at peace with all

But we have to recognise that we live in a world where there is disorder, disunity and hatred. And for there to be a beautiful relationship our love in itself isn’t enough – love needs to be received as well as given. But as God’s people seeking beauty and beautiful relationships we can still seek peace.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Romans 12:18

Conclusion

We are on a journey into discovering beauty. In the power of the Spirit this involves moving beyond physical beauty to relational beauty – and ultimately to the love of the Trinity. And then being transformed by that love so that as we appreciate it more, we become more like it.

What’s the next step on the journey for you?

Here are a few questions to help us apply these things:

  • How does the thing I find beautiful in the physical world point beyond itself to relational beauty – and supremely the beauty of the love relationship within the Trinity?
  • How can I get into the habit of enjoying the beauty of the love relationship of the Trinity?
  • Which aspect of how I can be transformed (set out above) do I most need to reflect on and ask for God’s help with?

And (if you’ve still got time) here’s one final quote from Jonathan Edwards:

There, even in heaven, dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is, or ever was, proceeds. There dwells God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, united as one, in infinitely dear, and incomprehensible, and mutual, and eternal love. There dwells God the Father, who is the father of mercies, and so the father of love, who so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son to die for it. There dwells Christ, the Lamb of God, the prince of peace and of love, who so loved the world that he shed his blood, and poured out his soul unto death for men. There dwells the great Mediator, through whom all the divine love is expressed toward men, and by whom the fruits of that love have been purchased, and through whom they are communicated, and through whom love is imparted to the hearts of all God’s people. There dwells Christ in both his natures, the human and the divine, sitting on the same throne with the Father. And there dwells the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of divine love, in whom the very essence of God, as it were, flows out, and is breathed forth in love, and by whose immediate influence all holy love is shed abroad in the hearts of all the saints on earth and in heaven. There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love — this eternal Three in One — is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows forever. There this glorious God is manifested, and shines forth, in full glory, in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!

Jonathan Edwards, Heaven a world of love

Taking it further

Jonathan Edwards on Beauty – Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney

‘Heaven a world of love’ – Sermon by Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards on the Experience of Beauty – Louis Mitchell

Reimagining Beauty – Matthew Capps – essay available online