5
kindly with His creatures."
12
But where is the third transcendental which gives the other
two their attractive power?
Next, I shall turn to perhaps the most influential Evangelical systematic textbook
of the last fifteen years--Millard J. Erickson's Christian Theology.
13
In part three of his
tome Erickson shows "what God is like."
14
He uses four categories: the greatness of
God, the goodness of God, God's nearness and distance: immanence and transcendence,
and God's three-in-oneness: trinity. Beauty would probably fall under the first two
categories, the greatness of God and the goodness of God. Under the greatness of God
Erickson includes spirituality, personality, life, infinity, and constancy. Under the
goodness of God Erickson examines God's moral purity, integrity and love. In the final
section of his systematics, "concluding thoughts," Erickson devotes one whole paragraph
to the aesthetic character of theology: "There is a beauty to the great compass and
interrelatedness of doctrines."
15
Overall, however, we see the true and the good, but
beauty is conspicuously absent.
Last, I shall survey Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology: An Introduction to
Biblical Doctrine.
16
Grudem does better than the previous two systematic theologies
considered by including beauty as one of the communicable attributes of God.
17
Grudem
classifies beauty as a "summary" attribute along with perfection, blessedness, and glory
and defines beauty as "that attribute of God whereby he is the sum of all desirable
12
Ibid., 70.
13
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1983; reprint,
unabridged, one-volume edition, 1995).
14
Ibid., 265-344.
15
Ibid., 1245-1246.
16
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing House, 1994).
17
Ibid., 219-220.