The Glory of God Composed of Form and Splendor – part 2

Posted on December 28, 2009

[Eric Johnson is our guest blogger for December. Eric is the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is his fourth post].

Last week I began a discussion based on a distinction borrowed from the great 20th century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, that glory is composed of both form and splendor. I will assume the reader has read that introduction as we explore this week the implications of that momentous distinction.

In art, physical form has to do with spatial arrangement of the features, say, of a statue. A beautiful statue looks good. But we are interested in psychological or spiritual form-something invisible-and therefore not something we can see with the physical eye, but something we arrive at by means of inference and wisdom.

God is the source and measure of glory; indeed, glory is the biblical term for the beauty of God. God’s glory is the “sum of his attributes,” his greatness and goodness, his meaningfulness. God is the essence of perfect, infinite form and splendor. So God’s form is the perfect configuration of psychological and spiritual features: God knows everything (including absolute self-awareness); always thinks clearly; is completely content,  but has emotional richness that corresponds to the rest of reality perfectly (including true empathy); acts determinedly and wisely; and (in the Trinity) consists of strong, loving persons-in-communion.

Last week we defined splendor as the depth dimension of a form, its inner radiance that “shines out” from the form. God is also the essence of perfect, infinite splendor, so he is the deepest of beings: he loves that which is lovely-himself supremely and all creatures, especially insofar as they resemble him-and he hates that which is ugly-sin; he regards all things in proportion to their true value with respect to himself; he always acts according to his preeminent values; and he “sees through” mere appearance and promotes depth in those made in his image.

Being the Son of God in human form, Jesus Christ is the perfect human representation of God’s form and splendor. The Gospels are important because they provide narrative descriptions of his glory, “glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Jesus Christ shows the human race flawless human form and consummate depth of splendor. Being increasingly conformed to Christ (in his form and splendor) is the goal of human life (Ro 8:29; 2Co 3:18).

So it is God’s intention that humans made in his image are created to realize the greatest form and splendor of which they are capable as finite creatures. Having good form means having healthy thinking and emotions, well-functioning memory, the ability to freely act so as to realize one’s realistic goals, and good relationships. Modern psychology has explored many of these features.

Having a high degree of splendor means being deep, rather than superficial, being focused on the important things in life: supernatural reality more than natural, people more than things, being and doing good more than simply looking good; but also having regard for the weak, hurting, broken, and sinners, and all creatures in proportion to their actual value before God, yet hating sin. Obviously modern psychology has not focused much on splendor.

This doxological focus (doxa = glory, Gk) makes human development central to God’s purposes. Children obviously manifest God’s glory, but it is good to develop into increasingly well-formed creatures with greater splendor. Because of their limited formal capacities, children necessarily act with less splendor than adults, because adults can do what they do intentionally for the glory of God; children cannot, at least not as fully as adults.

Glory of course is not the possession of anyone except God. To be human is only to be a means of God’s glory; by grace God permits humans to participate in his glory. The more well-formed our souls and the more splendorous their form, the greater glory we are capable of receiving from God in worship, love, and gratitude and expressing in our voices, lives, and relationships.

This glory framework gives Christians a different way of viewing psychopathology.  Sin is the worst kind of psychopathology because it radically compromises our ability to participate in God’s glory. Sin’s essence is anti-glory.  Part of sin’s effects was the damage of the soul’s form evident in distorted thinking, inappropriate emotions, and personality disorders, so this kind of damage should be of concern to Christian counseling, since it can inhibit our ability to participate in God’s glory. However, sin’s effects are most evident in the compromise of splendor. The more sinful we are, the less devoted to God we are and the more focused we are on this creation as an end in itself (so it becomes an idol), so those who live lives distracted by the superficial (fame, fashion, power, possessions) lack splendor. Low levels of splendor, then, is a greater problem than poor form in Christian counseling. Interestingly, having damaged form leads to increased suffering, but suffering promotes our deepening and so our splendor.

Christ came to earth and died and was raised to heal our form and deepen our splendor. Some healing in our form is possible in this life, but its complete healing is reserved for heaven. However, in light of the foregoing, we might expect more healing on earth in our capacity for splendor, as we grow through suffering in worship, wisdom, faith, hope, and love. Christian psychotherapy and counseling is doxological as it participates in the glory of Christ’s salvation by helping to bring healing to the human form and increase human splendor through the resources of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

The Glory of God Composed of Form and Splendor

Posted on December 20, 2009

[Eric Johnson is our guest blogger for December. Eric is the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is his third post].

Thanks to wonderful teaching I received early on in my Christian life (at Toronto Baptist Seminary, Calvin College, and Bethlehem Baptist Church with John Piper), I have been drawn to think often about how God’s glory is related to psychology and counseling. In an early article, “Self-Esteem in the Presence of God” (1989), I argued that God alone is of infinite worth and that whatever value humans possess has to be vastly secondary and completely derived from God’s worth, since he is the source of whatever worth there is in his creatures. Christian thinking on the psychology of self-esteem needed to factor such a perspective into its theories and counseling. Needless to say, I hadn’t come up with this on my own. I had simply read Jonathan Edward’s classic essay, “The End for Which God Created the World,” which may the best concise discussion of God’s glory ever written (though it is not easy!)[i].

Sometime during the past decade I came across the massive 7-volume work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1982-1989) on God’s glory (Balthasar is arguably one of the greatest Catholic theologians since Aquinas), called “The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics.” Though daunting in size and erudition, I have learned more about glory in this work. Balthasar there makes makes an important distinction (which he learned from Aquinas) that glory is composed of two dimensions: form and splendor. I would like to spend the rest of this blog explaining this distinction, and next week apply it to psychology and counseling.

Balthasar equates glory with beauty, and he wrote that the form of something is a certain arrangement of its elements, which altogether have a certain complexity, harmony, and proportionality, which constitutes its beauty (consider the form of a strong, healthy horse or Michelangelo’s David) (Edwards, 1989, defined beauty similarly in “The Nature of True Virtue”). The form of the triune God is the most beautiful of all forms, because God is infinitely the greatest being there is, particularly since God consists of the most awesome and amazing arrangement of characteristics and moral virtues that can be. The form of a creature can be no more than a miniscule replica (or image or representation or sign) of the beauty of its infinite Creator, and the ultimate standard of comparison for the replica must always be the original form upon which it is based.

However, an object’s splendor, according to Balthasar, is the depth dimension of its form and refers to the form’s inner radiance and luminescence, we might say, the form’s genuine value that lies, as it were, within it and that shines forth from it. It is what we might call the density of its full beauty. And again, the triune God possesses the greatest degree of splendor imaginable, because God has infinite depth and density of glory, and all creaturely splendor must be measured most truly by the degree of its depth resemblance to the beauty of God.

Form, we might say then, is the beauty evident on the surface of something, whereas splendor is the beauty that lies within. Therefore only the omniscient God fully knows the splendor of something. Splendor is always something of a mystery to humans; we can recognize it generally, but not fathom its depths. Also, while intelligence understands form, it takes wisdom to perceive splendor. Grasping something’s form seems to be mostly a mental or cognitive enterprise, while grasping something’s splendor is more a heart activity, which engages our emotions and entails an appraisal of its worth (in the case of God, love and worship!). But both form and splendor are involved and interrelated in an object’s full beauty.

To illustrate the difference between form and splendor, think of a statue of a living human being. It may be a statue that has great form, identical to the person it represents, but the internal glory or beauty of the human being far exceeds the statue. The human has obvious depth that the statue lacks: the former is alive and has far greater value! For another illustration, consider two siblings who are taking care of their dying mother, one, in order to guarantee a large inheritance, and the other, out of loving devotion. Their actions may have the same form, but their moral splendor is considerably different. Balthasar said that form and splendor are inseparable, and a thing’s splendor is dependent on its form.

I’m sure readers are already sensing the potential here for Christian psychology and counseling. Please respond with your insights this week, and next week I’ll offer a few of my own.[ii]

 

References

 

Balthasar, H. U. (1982-1989). The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. San Francisco: Ignatius.

Edwards, J. (1989). Ethical Writings (Vol. 8). (P. Ramsey, Ed.) New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Johnson, E. L. (2007). Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal. Downers Grove, IL:       InterVarsity.

Johnson, E. L. (1989). Self-Esteem in the Presence of God. Journal of Psychology and Theology , 226- 235.

Piper, J. (1998). God’s Passion for His Glory. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

 

[i] John Piper (1998) republished Edward’s essay with a great introduction and some helpful footnotes. It is also available in volume 8 of the Yale edition of Edward’s works (1989)

[ii] Most of this discussion is derived from Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal (Johnson, 2007, pp. 312-313)

The nature of persons: Monism or duality?

Posted on June 18, 2007

[Editor note: this is Dr. Ed Welch's second post for the month of June. In this post he considers the consequences of seeing the nature of persons from a monistic rather than the historic dualistic perspective.]

Do you remember the days when human beings were neatly divided into three relatively separate compartments? We were body-soul-spirit, and each part had its own expert: the body belonged to the medical doctor, the spirit to the pastor, and the soul to the psychologist. Since it was one of the few widely accepted theological axioms, it ruled over Christian psychology from the 1960’s to the turn of the century. It has probably had more impact on our present discussions within Christian counseling than we realize.

But without warning, this view of the person disappeared. Apparently, it was attached to modernism, and it was run out of town by postmodernism and it’s successors. You can still find those who won’t let it go, but this remnant lives isolated from present-day discussions. Neuropsychology, for example, has long been monistic, though you can detect a tip of the hat to duality in discussions about bottom up and top down relationships (“bottom” being our neurological hardwiring, “top” being our cognitions). Theological discussion is also leaning toward versions of “Hebraic monism,” though duality is tolerated.

Call me old-fashioned, I have not yet been persuaded by the monistic arguments, so as of today, I find that duality – that we are embodied souls – best fits both Scripture and human experience.

You can find teaching on duality in most any theology text book. The counseling task is to shake the dust off old theological formulations and ask practical questions such as, So what? What difference does it make that we are embodied souls? Christian counselors, from my perspective, are applied or practical theologians.

Before posing some applications of this theology, we need some clarity on what we mean by inner person, heart, mind, spirit, and soul. With only two ontological categories from which to choose, all these are now overlapping perspectives on the same spiritual core of the person. They all accent that we are connected to God in everything we do. We have our loyalties to him or to ourselves. Granted, there are nuances among these different words, but they universally emphasize the God-wardness of all of life. For example, the Greek word nous, usually translated as “mind,” is not so sterile as cognitive therapists make it out to be. Rather, thoughts are anchored in our spiritual allegiances.

Here are possible applications of our ontological duality.

• There are ways that the body cannot affect the inner person (a.k.a., heart, spirit, soul, mind). The body is wasting away but a deteriorating body, even at the level of the brain, does not leave us morally incompetent (2 Cor. 4:16). Simply put, the body can not make us sin. This has innumerable applications to psychiatric disorders.

• Emotions and cognitions are no longer in a discrete category that is separate from “spiritual” matters. Emotions don’t just simply exist, as they are an expression of the inner person they are a kind of language. They reveal the heart. They are interpretations of our world. They point to our spiritual allegiances. Anger, for example, typically says, “I have been wronged, and I authorize myself to be judge, jury and executioner.” More deeply, it says, “I will be a god rather than trust the Righteous Judge.”

• Emotions can also be authored more by the body than the inner person. Emotions, after all, are physical phenomena. A host of problems in the body and brain can affect our emotions. Ontological duality does not always lend itself to simplistic formulations.

• With regard to medication, this ontology gives guidance on what it can do and what it can’t. For example, medication can affect bodily functioning. As such, since emotions are dependent on the physical body, we can expect that psychiatric medications can affect emotions both positively and negatively. But they cannot motivate obedience to or love for Jesus Christ. That is the purview of our hearts.

Lurking under the various differences within Christian counseling are matters of theological anthropology. Who is the person? Of what do we consist? At issue is not that some counselors have a theology of the person and other’s don’t. The reality is that everyone has an action-guiding theology of the person. Sometimes that theology is implicit, other times it is explicit. A reasonable goal for Christian counselors is that we ferret out our deep theological assumptions, submit them to exegetical scrutiny, and engage in the task of practical theology.

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