A Grace of Sense - theological aesthetics

 If I have, in my former posts, given the impression that asceticism is of a lesser value, I sincerely apologize. Much of the world's beauty would indeed be eclipsed without ascetic spirituality. The basic rule is the word of the Lord: "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (Jn 20:25) As Thomas Merton put it, hope is the secret of an ascetic life. Hope withholds our own judgment and our own will from us, and eventually abandons the world we live in. The reason for that is not, Merton stresses, that we or the world were bad, but rather that in our present state of mind we can not get an advantage of the best in the world. Furthermore, Merton claims that we enjoy all the creatures in hope. To employ the Augustinean uti-frui - pattern, Merton says that we do not enjoy creatures for themselves, but them as they are in Christ, full of promise. God has promised us a new heaven and a new earth.  I can not help tha...

In the general opinion, faith and imagination have nothing in common, unless viewed with suspicion, when faith is understood as something entirely imaginary. Instead, a devout Christian never considers the object of faith as a thing imagined. And how could one do that? The object of our faith is the very core of existence, the most true of all.  Perhaps the most celebrated definition of faith in the Bible is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Heb 11,1; RSV) Thus, faith inevitably contains the dimension of imagination. This verse is particularly illuminating for our purpose.  The Greek word hypostasis may be rendered "that which has actual existence." ( I am not discussing the Trinitarian facets of the word here). Therefore, faith is hardly mere fantasy, but an act of imagination that penetrates into the actual, ultimate reality. Religious institutions tend to be conservative, to say the least, or, rather, narrow-minded. It is a ...