'Divine Beauty and Excellency: Some Lessons from Jonathan Edwards'

This is the printed form of a public lecture delivered at Regent College in the July 2008 on the aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). In it the author argues that Edwards's version of Christian aesthetics has application to contemporary theology and praxis, despite the fact that his vision of divine beauty is embedded in his broader metaphysics, e.g. his idealism and mental phenomenalism. In fact, Edwards's metaphysics only makes sense when viewed as part-and-parcel of his Trinitarian theology.