‘As in a Mirror’: Jonathan Edwards, Self-Love and Enlarging to Receive Another
Through a robust deployment of visual metaphors, Jonathan Edwards’s theology utilizes notions of vision to articulate his doctrine of God, creation, anthropology, redemption and ultimately glorification. Focusing on anthropology, this article attends to how human beings are constituted through sight...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2023
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| In: |
International journal of systematic theology
Year: 2023, Volume: 25, Issue: 2, Pages: 249-266 |
| IxTheo Classification: | KAH Church history 1648-1913; modern history NBE Anthropology NCA Ethics |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Through a robust deployment of visual metaphors, Jonathan Edwards’s theology utilizes notions of vision to articulate his doctrine of God, creation, anthropology, redemption and ultimately glorification. Focusing on anthropology, this article attends to how human beings are constituted through sight, and reconstituted (i.e. regenerated) as they are contemplated in the Son and as they are given a vision of the Father in the Son by the Spirit of illumination. Put differently, Edwards’s anthropology is ordered around its teleology of becoming like God only if one can ‘see him as he is’ (1 Jn 3:2), which is anticipated by faith in this present age and ‘through a mirror dimly’ (1 Jn 13:12). After mooring his anthropology to broader theological concerns, the article narrows to consider how Edwards’s idiosyncratic personalism is developed around the notion of a ‘reflective self’ that can enlarge to internalize an ‘other’. Clarifying this notion is a brief comparison of a similar construction in Thomas Aquinas, showing how Edwards’s theory of loving neighbor as oneself is a unique contribution to questions concerning personhood, self-love and neighbor-love. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-2400 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: International journal of systematic theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/ijst.12512 |