Relational theists like Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Catherine Mowry LaCugna contend that the cross of Christ is a dilemma for classical theism, indicting orthodox Christianity with the demise of trinitarianism and the bifurcation of theology and the Christian life. Operative among these contemporary theologians' assumptions, though, is the notion that classical theism is "perfect being theology" and vice versa thereby conflating perfect being theology with aspects of the Christian tradition. Implicit within perfect being theology is a scientific methodology that reduces reality to only empirically verifiable facts.

But perhaps these theologians are ignoring important resources for resolving the dilemma—namely God's beauty. How might the peculiar beauty of the cross, then, understood in terms of God's theodrama—the economic Trinity as summary of the Gospel— rather than as a perfect being address some of the concerns of relational theism? By critically appropriating Hans Urs von Balthasar's focus on Jesus Christ as the distinct speaking and doing form (Gestalt) of God's beauty, a form of divine communicative action, it is my contention that God's beauty is the fittingness seen in the incarnate Son's actions to the Father's will that radiates God's glory and enraptures properly perceiving subjects, transforming the imagination through the shaping power of the Spirit and drawing them to participate in God's drama of redemption.

I establish this thesis by conceptually expanding upon a relevant biblical motif found in the theological patterning of the Suffering Servant in Jeremiah and its connection with wisdom, linking it with a theological interpretation of Col 1-2:5. In doing so, God's actions in Christ's redemptive-creative suffering and glorious resurrection become necessary to defining God's beauty as the perfect attunement or fittingness of the incarnate Son's actions in the Spirit to the Father's will. Consequently, God's beauty requires action, imploring believers to imaginatively participate in God's theodrama. In resurrecting the imagination, I suggest that the imagination is transformed by participating in the beauty of God's trinitarian life revealed by the Spirit in incarnate Beauty (2 Cor 3:18). As such, we manifest fitting performances in the dramatic theater of God's glory.