King, Jonathan. The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics. Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2018. 424 pp. $34.99.
The Beauty of the Lord offers “the christological contours of a biblically-based theology of beauty” (22). Jonathan King’s work can be situated in relationship to several other scholarly fields. King himself suggests a fourfold division between the natural theology of beauty, theology of the arts, religious aesthetics, and theological aesthetics. This division clarifies King’s own approach, which falls into the final category. What distinguishes theological aesthetics from the other three fields is that it finds its “authoritative norm” in the canon of Scripture (6). Resultingly, this bookmaintains both the structure and tone of a work of academic systematic theology.
King’s two-part thesis is clearly stated in the book’s opening pages: “first, beauty corresponds in some way to the attributes of God; second, the theodrama of God’s eternal plan in creation, redemption, and consummation entails a consistent and fitting expression and outworking of this divine beauty” (22–23). The book’s first task, taken up in Chapter 2 (“Beauty Triune”), is an argument for beauty’s correspondence to the attributes of God. King adopts a classical understanding of beauty built on the accounts offered by Anselm, Aquinas, Bavinck, and Barth. The thrust of these views is that beauty is an “intrinsic quality of things” that may be “discerned via objective properties,” most foundationally through the idea of “fittingness.” While “a realist view of beauty is postulated,” it also “involves the effect beauty has of eliciting a subjective response of aesthetic pleasure as we perceive it” (50). King utilizes the framework of divine simplicity to demonstrate how this view of beauty may be understood as a perfection of God’s essence.
King further explains how God’s beauty is connected to his glory and how this glory is displayed both within the life of the Trinity (ad intra) and in the actions of God (ad extra) through the “immanent form” of trinitarian beauty—the Son’s fitting “action in the divine economy” (31). King then turns to the theological framework of fittingness in the great theodrama (as articulated by Kevin Vanhoozer) of the Bible. The reader is invited to perceive the theodramatic fittingness of the Son in the narrative arc from creation to consummation through three “symmetries”—creation, image, and relationship.
Chapter 3 (“Beauty’s Debut”) traces the beginning of the “sublime comedy” of Scripture (89). Here, the term sublime refers to the aesthetic dimensions of the story pattern as well as to the fact that the story of the Bible does not end where it started but rather ends with a consummation “incomparably and everlastingly more glorious” (92). King draws on Irenaeus’s understanding of the story of the Bible to set the stage for the symmetry of creation and re-creation. The chapter also focuses on how humans image God in official (reflecting royal priesthood), constitutional (as a whole person/body-soul), and ethical-relational (bearing certain responsibilities) dimensions.
How is the incarnation to be seen as a “fitting” response demonstrative of God’s beauty? Chapter 4 (“Beauty Condescending”) takes up this question by focusing on the beauty of Christ’s person and role (142). King delves into some of the book’s meatiest biblical and theological analysis as he considers Christ’s identity through the lens of theodrama and the redemptive-historical narrative. Here, King explores Hans Urs von Balthasar’s contributions to theological aesthetics, concluding the chapter with a study of the theological aesthetic of Isaiah 53:2: “no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (204).
The entirety of chapter 5 (“Beauty Redeeming”) focuses on the form of the cross. King aims to show how the retributive justice meted out through the cross is entirely fitting for the demonstration of God’s glory. Here, King’s argument details the ways that Christ’s “high priestly mediatorship” and “kingly glory” are made visible in the cross (212).
Chapter 6 (“Beauty’s Denouement”) is focused on identifying not only the “symmetries, proportion and unity evident in the structure of the divine plan, but also recognition of its aesthetic asymmetry and disproportion evident in the surplus of the gloriousness of its consummation ending compared to its creation beginning” (331–32, emphasis original). There is an overwhelming sense of “how much more” at this end of the narrative arc. Accordingly, King examines God’s work in making image-bearers beautiful. Human immortality is proposed as a sort of “final fittingness” (283). This chapter incorporates the work of Jonathan Edwards as a key theological voice.
King’s overall argument is undoubtedly successful. The book offers a hospitable intertwining of a host of ecumenical sources, and King’s overarching claims regarding the symmetry of creation, image, and relationship visible in the work of the Son will be amenable to a large swath of Christian traditions. However, because King’s claims are heady and his prose is dense, the book is accessible to a limited audience and is best suited for graduate students and scholars familiar with the methodologies of systematic theology and proficient in biblical languages. Although Kevin Vanhoozer’s foreword to The Beauty of the Lord suggests that “This is the kind of theology that edifies the church” (xii), readers may wonder how King’s contribution to “theology as aesthetics” might function outside the academy in the work of discipleship and evangelism. King states at the onset that his work is not concerned with the “secondary beauty” of the arts. However, the project may prove less satisfying because it remains an exercise in pure systematic theology. A gesture toward how this reading of God’s beauty in Christ’s work might impact the church as well as Christian engagement with the arts would be welcome. Does King envision that his work on the beauty of the Lord will shape practical engagement with an aesthetically saturated world? It is clear King would not wish to silo his academic monograph as a further object of aesthetic contemplation, but the book does not offer a broadly accessible path towards edification for pastors, worship leaders, and congregants.
