The Redemption of Secondary Beauty: Jonathan Edwards's Eschatology and Creation's Telos

Recent literature has assessed Jonathan Edwards's theology of creation, particularly of creation's beauty, as one that provides the resources for environmental ethics. Understood as a communication of God's glory, creation in all its beauty becomes a crucial means of human knowledge and sense of divine beauty. However, these accounts neglect Edwards's eschatology in its exclusion of the non‐human creation from redemption, an exclusion that results from Edwards's definition of secondary beauty. The telos of the creation as a whole becomes subservient to the telos of humanity, and thus, once humanity's goal of union with God is achieved, the creation serves no other purpose. This article explores these weaknesses of Edwards's eschatology and offers a revision of Edwards that seeks to read with the grain of his theology of beauty and his Reformed emphasis on the orientation of all creation towards divine glory.