The Architecture of Beneficence

Abstract

"While much work has been done in recent decades to restore the centrality of beauty to its rightful place in constructive theology, such an aesthetic turn, as I will note in this article, is far from problem-free. Specifically, suspicions about the ideological character of aesthetics have been voiced by a number of postmodern thinkers, for whom the identification of beauty and justice— already present in pre-Socratic cosmogonies—is irrevocably dissolved. The broader assumption underwriting my approach is that such dislocations of beauty from goodness, when transposed to the religious sphere, are but contemporary modulations of the “Great Controversy” theme central to Seventh-day Adventist theology and piety.1 After delineating the basic contours of this problematic, I will turn to Jonathan Edwards’s Trinitarian aesthetics and its rich relational ontology in an attempt to provide a constructive engagement with these issues. While retaining reservations about certain aspects of his thought, I will nevertheless suggest that his understanding of the nature of true beauty adds an important voice to current debates. In the final section of the article, I will turn to a theological interpretation of Andrei Rublev’s Trinity icon as a form of art to help me further elaborate on Edwards’s proposal, eventually pointing to the biblical Sabbath as a possible focal point for a distinctive Adventist approach to theological aesthetics. The account of theodramatic beauty that will be articulated in that context, furnishes us with a credible apologetic platform from which a response to (postmodern) qualms about the ethical viability of beauty can be cogently crafted"