image:
This is an ancient notion of late-antique Platonism and all its Christian continuations. In this tradition, the notion is theologically and metaphysically loaded; it carries its full burden as it appears in Edwards' language, shaping not merely his theory of the beautiful, but the experience itself (Jenson 16).
In his "Personal Narrative," Edwards begins with a consideration of his own concerns about the soul from his childhood. In his own view, he turned away from the ideas expressed in his childhood and "went on in ways of sin" (Edwards 290). Part of what Edwards sought in his version of sin and missed in his theology at an early age was what he calls "affection and delight" (Edwards 290). Edwards persists and eventually is led to understand Christ in a different way, so that his own redemption becomes something in which he can delight. He comes to see the relationship between holiness and beauty, something that is denied by many other theologians or expressed in such a different way that they seem to be talking about a different issue entirely. Edwards is clear about the effect of his revelation on himself:
I had an inward, sweet sense of these things, that at times came into my heart; an
...