Heaven is a World of Beauty: Part 2

The beauty of heaven is not only dis­cerned syn­chron­i­cally in the struc­ture of heaven’s soci­ety, but also diachron­i­cally in its unfold­ing his­tory. Accord­ing to Edwards, heaven’s his­tory pro­gresses as God’s attrib­utes shine forth more bril­liantly ad extra. The more heaven par­tic­i­pates in God’s attrib­utes, the more beau­ti­ful it becomes. Heaven’s his­tory orig­i­nates in the divine dis­po­si­tion to com­mu­ni­cate his inner full­ness exter­nally, devel­ops in accor­dance with the pro­gres­sive reveal­ing of Jesus Christ, and has as its mech­a­nism the visio Dei or the beau­tific vision. We will exam­ine each of these.

Ani­mat­ing heaven’s his­tory in the thought of Jonathan Edwards is God’s dis­po­si­tion to com­mu­ni­cate his inter­nal excel­len­cies to the cre­ated order. All that God is inter­nally – his beauty, his holi­ness, his excel­lency – he desires to “repli­cate,” “repeat,” of “com­mu­ni­cate” exter­nally in the cre­ated order, that his glory may shine forth and grow increas­ingly through­out the uni­verse.¹ As God’s inter­nal full­ness is essen­tially Trini­tar­ian, con­sist­ing in the infi­nite knowl­edge of his own excel­len­cies (the Logos of God, God the Son) and in the infi­nite love that arises between he and his infi­nite knowl­edge (the Agape of God, the Holy Spirit), so too shall be the exter­nal efful­gence of that full­ness, con­sist­ing in the dual com­mu­ni­ca­tion of God’s knowl­edge and love (Word & affec­tion; Son & Spirit) to the crea­ture.² Cre­ated his­tory, and espe­cially the his­tory of heaven, will thus advance accord­ing to the pro­gres­sive reveal­ing of God’s knowl­edge (namely, God the Son) in the love of the Holy Spirit. We see this “son-​​centered” his­tory unfold in sev­eral ways: in the fall of angels & angels’ trial, in the main demar­ca­tions of heaven’s his­tory, and in the beau­tific vision.

Writ­ing about the period shortly after the cre­ation of heaven and the angels, Edwards sur­mised that it must have been “made known to the angels at their first cre­ation that they were to be min­is­ter­ing spir­its to men, and to serve the Son of God in that way, by min­is­ter­ing to them as those that were pecu­liarly beloved of him: because … this was the end of their cre­ation.”³ Iron­i­cally, this announce­ment was fol­lowed by the fall of the repro­bate angels. As the high­est and bright­est of all the angelic com­mu­nity, Lucifer, out of pride, could not bear the thought of becom­ing a min­is­ter­ing spirit “to the race of mankind that he had seen newly cre­ated, that appeared so fee­ble, mean and despi­ca­ble, [and] so vastly infe­rior … to him.… This occa­sioned his fall, and now he with the other angels he drew away with him are fallen.”⁴ Fear gripped the remain­ing angels, see­ing that the best of their own could fall, and they were con­se­quently placed under a pro­ba­tion­ary period where their fidelity to God, to His Son, and to God’s peo­ple would be tested. This test­ing lasted for cen­turies prior to the incar­na­tion, yet found its great­est trial in their unwa­ver­ing fidelity to Christ through­out his earthly min­istry where he appeared in the form of sin­ful flesh, was born in a sta­ble, lived in “beg­garly cir­cum­stances,” and sub­mit­ted to the igno­min­ious death on the cross.⁵ Thus inter­est­ingly, the announce­ment of the gospel to the heav­enly host had a neg­a­tive effect upon its his­tory, intro­duc­ing sin into the cre­ated order, yet set­ting up the con­di­tions for a more glo­ri­ous “redemp­tion” later whereby God’s holy attrib­utes could shine forth more clearly.

For Edwards, two sig­nif­i­cant events stand out in heaven’s his­tory which pro­pel it to such greater heights of blessed­ness that one can con­clude that a new age has dawned in heaven. The first is the ascen­sion of the res­ur­rected Christ to heaven where he vis­i­bly takes the throne of the upper world as the God-​​Man. Hav­ing pur­chased redemp­tion for the church in the lower world, Edwards argues that at Christ’s ascen­sion he sim­i­larly brought eter­nal life and redemp­tion to those of the upper world, namely the angels who remained faith­ful to him and to his heav­enly Father.⁶ A par­al­lelism thus obtains between the his­to­ries of these two worlds, a point he demon­strates by his exe­ge­sis of sev­eral texts. As Christ brought sal­va­tion to the church in his “descent” to earth, so too did he “fill all things” in his “ascent” to heaven, con­ceiv­ably bring­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to the elect angels (Eph 4.10).⁷ As Christ was the bread of life for the world (this world), so too is he the bread of angels whereby they have eter­nal life (John 6.33 with a typo­log­i­cal read­ing of Psalm 78.25).⁸ Thus, while angels have no need for sal­va­tion from sin, they do need to be vis­i­bly brought into the orbit of Christ’s pur­poses of bring­ing all things under his rule. They need Christ as their bread of life. This is accom­plished, Edwards argues, by Christ bestow­ing upon them a secu­rity of per­se­ver­ance at his enthrone­ment in heaven, whereby they no longer are able to sin and fall away from God. This “con­fir­ma­tion” of the angels is how angels find “rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” in Christ (Col 1.20).

Here we may take occa­sion to observe the sweet har­mony that there is between God’s dis­pen­sa­tions, and par­tic­u­larly the anal­ogy and agree­ment there is between his deal­ings with the angels and his deal­ings with mankind: that though one is inno­cent and the other guilty, the one hav­ing eter­nal life by a covenant of grace, the other by a covenant of works, yet both have eter­nal life by his Son Jesus Christ God-​​man; and both, though dif­fer­ent ways, by the humil­i­a­tion and suf­fer­ings of Christ, the one as the price of life, the other as the great­est and last trial of their stead­fast and per­se­ver­ing obe­di­ence.⁹

In this act of con­fir­ma­tion heaven is fur­ther beau­ti­fied by the final removal of the fear of falling away from the angelic community.

Redeemed human beings also pop­u­late heaven. When we turn to Edwards’s under­stand­ing of the human saints in heaven, we real­ize that they too are con­stantly grow­ing in their knowl­edge and love of God, and thereby con­tribute to the grow­ing beauty of heaven. The means by which they par­take of this growth is by their spir­i­tual sight of God, which has typ­i­cally been termed the “beau­tific vision” in Chris­t­ian the­ol­ogy.¹⁰ Edwards argues that the heav­enly saints see God, not directly through their phys­i­cal eyes (that can never be), but indi­rectly through see­ing him man­i­fested in his great works. “So far as they see God and know him in his works (which is the prin­ci­ple way in which God man­i­fests him­self …) they see and know [him] as he man­i­fests him­self in the work of redemp­tion, which [is] the great­est and most glo­ri­ous of all God’s works, the work of works to which all God’s works are reduced.”¹¹ It is in view­ing this work that they come to the high­est knowl­edge of God. While elect angels pos­sess great insight into the things of God, their knowl­edge merely con­sists of God’s nat­ural attrib­utes (his power, great­ness, and order). Such knowl­edge does not rep­re­sent the great­est knowl­edge of God there is to be known: namely, the super­nat­ural knowl­edge of his grace, his mercy, all per­ceived in the grand nar­ra­tive of the his­tory of redemp­tion. Put sim­ply, knowl­edge of God as Sav­ior speaks more of the riches of who God is than merely know­ing him as supreme gov­er­nor (as the angels do). Saints know of God, and “see” God in two ways: by expe­ri­enc­ing his sal­va­tion from sin them­selves in Christ, and by watch­ing this great work com­mence fur­ther in the world. Hence, the heav­enly saints must see God’s work of redemp­tion on earth in order to see more of him. How this works, Edwards does not know; that it hap­pens, he is cer­tain of: “the SAINTS IN HEAVEN,” he writes, “see what comes to pass in the CHURCH ON EARTH.”¹² By virtue of their mys­ti­cal union with Christ, Edwards argues that, “What he sees of the church of God on earth, and of the flour­ish­ing of reli­gion here, they see accord­ing to their capac­ity. What he sees of the pun­ish­ment of his ene­mies in hell, they see in him.”¹³ Thus through­out the cen­turies, the heav­enly saints have observed with ever increas­ing joy the growth of God’s redemp­tion – see­ing God in the Exo­dus, the estab­lish­ment of David’s throne, the advent of Christ, the day of Pen­te­cost, and on through the days of Con­stan­tine, the Ref­or­ma­tion, and the great revivals cur­rent in his day.¹⁴

To sum up, we see that for Edwards heaven’s beauty is for the most part his­tor­i­cal in nature, cen­tered on the increas­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the knowl­edge and love God in the per­son of Jesus Christ. It orig­i­nates in the God’s eter­nal dis­po­si­tion to com­mu­ni­cate his inter­nal Trini­tar­ian full­ness ad extra, com­mences with the announce­ment that in the future heaven shall be sub­ject to the God-​​Man, advances to increas­ing lev­els of blessed­ness as Christ’s glory increases, and cul­mi­nates for redeemed human­ity in the beatific vision.

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