Beauty That Bends the Mind: Reading Jonathan Edwards Today

Not everyone enjoys reading Jonathan Edwards. I understand why. His sentences are long. His tone can be intense. His theological footing—unapologetically Reformed, unapologetically God-centred—feels foreign to many modern readers. And yet, I keep returning to him. Not just to understand his ideas, but to linger in his language.

There’s something about how Edwards writes that stirs more than my intellect. It unsettles, invites, compels. It’s not just that he says true things about God, but that he says them in a way that imagines them as beautiful. His metaphors, his turns of phrase, his repetitions—they do theological work. They awaken a sense of scale, of weight, of glory.

I’ve wondered what it is that draws me to him. Is it his distance from my world that opens up new insights? Is it the poetic, pre-modern cadence of his prose that feels like a secret waiting to be uncovered? Or is it the sheer boldness of his God—sovereign, unmanageable, radiant—that unsettles my comfortably modern faith?

Some readers find Edwards too difficult, too abstract, too severe. But for me, there’s something about his writing that feels like stepping into a cathedral of thought—dark, vast, echoing, alive with light at odd angles.

And in a time when Christian communication so often trades wonder for clarity, imagination for explanation, I wonder what Edwards might teach us. Not just about doctrine, but about how beauty speaks. About how truth can be carried on rhythm. About how words can turn us, like a magnet turns iron, toward God. And perhaps most crucially, about how mystery does not dissolve our thinking but invites it. Mystery doesn’t close a door—it opens one. It places us at the feet of something unknown and unknowable in any forensic sense. It raises questions while never resolving all of them. It awakens worship, not because God is clear and orderly, but because God is beautifully, endlessly, indescribable.

A Personal Encounter with Edwards' Aesthetic-Theological Style

I first came to Jonathan Edwards while studying a Bachelor of Theology at Ridley College in Melbourne. I can’t remember whether it was the 2003 Desiring God National Conference, A God-Entranced Vision of All Things, or a unit on the History of Evangelical Christianity that opened the door—but once I stepped through, I didn’t want to leave.

It was the Great Awakening that first caught my historical curiosity. I’ve always been drawn to moments when ideas catch fire across a generation, and here was Edwards: preacher, theologian, witness to revival. But the deeper pull came when I began reading Freedom of the Will. Edwards’ writing here wasn’t just theological; it was almost psychological. He was trying to make sense of how God can be completely sovereign, and yet humans still act freely—not as robots, but as real, responsible persons. That tension felt both ancient and oddly modern.

Still, if there’s one work of his that’s shaped me the most, it’s the one he never published: his Treatise on the Trinity. I remember reading it for the first time and feeling like I was walking across an ice lake—aware of both beauty and depth beneath me. His language about the Father begetting the Son through self-knowledge, and the Spirit proceeding as the bond of love between them, wasn’t just speculation. It was worship. He was trying to describe the God he adored, not just define Him.

And yet, he never published it. Why? The work was completed early enough in his life that he certainly could have released it. He referenced its content in his sermons, and it shaped several of his Miscellanies. He even added to it over the years. But none of that explains why he held it back. I can’t help but wonder if the very nature of the Trinity—its immensity, its inner beauty, its endless mystery—was what made the work feel unfinished. Perhaps it was the one thing he never settled. Perhaps the task of writing on the Trinity was too great, even for him, to offer with full confidence in print. Maybe it continued to pull at him—quietly, insistently—until the end.

It’s that sense—of theology as adoration, as reverent reaching—that keeps me reading Edwards. Not everything he says lands with me. Sometimes his categories feel distant or overly exact. But I never doubt that he’s trying to speak of something real. Something that presses back against him. Something that makes demands.

Edwards writes as if truth has weight. As if beauty belongs to doctrine. As if God cannot be rightly spoken of unless the words themselves try to stretch.

And I suppose that’s what keeps me reading: I want to stretch too.

Theological Language and the Imagination

There’s a way of writing about theology that is dry, clipped, and safe. It states truths, defines categories, and clarifies terms. It has its place. But Edwards shows us a different path.

His writing is not always clear. But it is often piercing. His language stretches toward something it cannot quite contain. And that’s the point. He wasn’t trying to flatten the mystery. He wanted to evoke it.

The best way I can describe it is this: Edwards writes like someone who is not trying to master divine things, but be mastered by them.

Take, for instance, his famous image of the Trinity as God’s idea of himself and the love between them as the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t present this as a diagram or formula. He offers it as an insight born of prayer, scripture, and contemplation. The language invites us into mystery—it does not resolve it. He’s not drawing a blueprint; he’s walking the reader into something radiant and veiled at once.

This is where his aesthetic imagination comes alive. He believed that to truly know God, one must not only understand truth but taste it. “There is a difference,” he wrote, “between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace.”

That difference is everything. For Edwards, faith is not just belief in content. It’s the awakened ability to behold spiritual beauty. It is a seeing that stirs, a knowing that loves.

This way of writing invites not only assent but affection. Not just belief, but delight.

In an age of productivity and precision, this kind of writing feels foreign. But maybe that’s why it matters. Edwards reminds us that theology is not a system to manage but a glory to behold.

What Might This Mean for Us Today?

I wonder sometimes what would happen if more of us wrote, preached, and spoke the way Edwards did—not in his syntax, not in his seventeenth-century New England cadence—but with that same sense of awe.

The temptation today is toward flattening. Faith is explained, not expressed. Truth becomes technique. We communicate like we’re assembling instructions—efficient, repeatable, measurable. And so many Christian messages now feel like they could have come from a product manual or a leadership course.

But what if theology is more like art than engineering? What if it’s closer to poetry than to politics?

That doesn’t mean we abandon clarity. It means we don’t abandon depth for the sake of clarity. It means we remember that God is not a concept to be handled, but a person to be worshipped.

Edwards knew that language could lead people to that kind of worship. Not by manipulating emotion, but by training the imagination. By helping people see what the heart has been too dulled to notice. By allowing beauty to carry truth.

For those of us who preach, teach, write—or just want to speak of our faith with honesty—there’s something in this. Maybe our calling is not just to get the doctrine right, but to find the words that make it vivid. To show what makes it lovely. To let it burn a little.

And to remember that when we speak of God, we are never finishing the sentence. We are standing at the edge of mystery, and we’re inviting others to look in.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand Jonathan Edwards. That’s part of the point. He doesn’t offer me something to master. He offers me a voice that slows me down, that lifts my eyes, that makes me want to try again.

In an age of information, Edwards gives me something different: a slow gaze, a strange beauty, a mind turned toward glory.

And for that, I keep reading.