Spirit, the Ascended Christ, and the Beauty of the Body

Laura Cerbus constructs a theology of the aesthetic formation of the body, attentive the Holy Spirit’s role in forming beautiful saints.This book juxtaposes the writings of the Reformed theological tradition’s leading theologian of beauty, Jonathan Edwards, with those of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, querying the effects of the Spirit’s work of beautification on the bodies of the saints. In contrast to other theological works on the body, Cerbus purposefully resists the tendency 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.