A Grace of Sense - theological aesthetics

 In the second book of his Confessions , St Augustine recounts a boyhood incident: he and his fellows did steal some pears from the neighbourhood. A modern reader probably sneers at the moral pangs Augustine describes in the following chapters. Really, how does one feel guilty on such an occasion? He and other lads wanted to taste some pears from some other's garden. Augustine admits that he was not deeply fond of the pears themselves but rather liked the idea of doing something forbidden: "I joyed in the theft and sin itself." Clearly, it was a heedless act: some teenagers took fruits and threw them away, after hardly tasting them. It happens. Does it yet qualify for an object of serious remorse? Some regard this episode as a proof of the absurdity of Christian ethics, concerned on the minute naughty thoughts. There are true problems in the world, real viciousness takes place, other than folly of the adolescent.  On the other hand, St Augustine's thoughts on human be...

  De Musica is an early work of Augustine, consisting of six books - the last of them written after his baptism in 391. It is a treatise of numbers, movement, rhythm and measure more than that of music (in the sense we understand the word). Initially Augustine aimed to dedicate a book to all the liberal sciences. However, the only accomplished works came to be De Musica and De Dialectica. The vision behind these books was a prominently Neo-Platonist one: through the study of these sciences that belong to the physical world, one could arrive at the incorporeal reality of God ( per corporalia cupiens ad incorporalia quibusdam quasi passibus certis vel pervenire vel ducere ). De Musica was a highly influential textbook throughout the Middle Ages. All subsequent authors on musical theory – Cassiodore, Boethius as well as Isidor – relied upon Augustine in a way or another. At the outset Augustine defines music in as scientia bene modulandi . This idea is difficult to translate c...

"Beauty redeems the world” says the protagonist, Prince Myshkin, in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot. For many reasons, he sounds like an idiot—today even more than before. Nothing redeems the world anymore; terms like redemption or justification have disappeared from the public sphere and come to be religious gibberish. Moreover, if there is anything in Christianity that brings hope to this world, it is not beauty. One may suggest justice, human dignity, or peace for the Christian agenda for the world, but not beauty. Even those who consider art the source of meaning in this world find the word beauty old-fashioned and inadequate. Aesthetic value has replaced beauty in the philosophy of art. In this article, I nevertheless maintain that Prince Myshkin was right. The Christian faith is an aesthetic view of the world: it perceives beauty even where beauty is not apparent. This is possible because a Christian is a person who is beautiful in God’s sight. For Protes...