This book constructs a theology of the aesthetic formation of the body, attentive to the key role of the Holy Spirit in forming beautiful saints. Working from a Reformed theological approach, Laura Cerbus engages with the writings of the Reformed tradition’s leading theologian of beauty, Jonathan Edwards. In conversation with Edwards, as well as the richness of the tradition outside of Reformed theology, most prominently in Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, this book queries the effects of the Spirit’s work of beautification on the bodies of the saints. Cerbus purposefully resists contrasting tendencies to either deny the significance of the body or uplift bodily beauty as a standard to oppress and exclude. By taking the ascended body of Christ as the exemplar of bodily beauty to which the Spirit conforms saints, Cerbus illuminates four key aspects of Christ’s ascended body: human, hidden, wounded, and fruitful. Across seven chapters, this book contends that The Spirit beautifies saints’ bodies after the ascended body of Christ, a beautification that has both present significance and an eschatological orientation
