A Grace of Sense - theological aesthetics

St Anne. Photo Anu Hätinen  The universe does not have to make sense to us. It is not ultimately necessary that we can understand the logic of being. Moreover, being does not ultimately need to have a logic whatsoever. Yet that is what we experience: we encounter the world as something that has a logic, as a series of incidents that make sense, almost without exception. When that is not the case, we shout: "This does not make sense!" And we feel distressed. We stubbornly expect that being makes sense. Obviously, this conviction is right. Our life does not work without a meaning. My words here, these letters on the screen, are designed to convey a meaning. They are written with the intention to be intelligible, not arbitrarily (like this: sodkhg wkreesi lasit). If the reader should find my point flawed, the criterion for that would be the reason, i.e. rationality that we both appeal to.  No one truly believes in the mere chance. On the contrary, it is amazing that the origin o...

Having accomplished the work of creation, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." (Gen 1,31) This is the ultimate statement of Christianity (and Judaism, and, probably, Islam) about the world in God's sight. It is the basic conviction of theological aesthetics and its biblical ground. The word "good" might as well be read as "beautiful." In the biblical narrative it became soon apparent, that this approach to the world is problematic. On the very next page of Genesis there came the Fall. In many theological traditions (mainly Western ones) the Fall caused large destruction to the primeval beauty of the creation. Nevertheless, the mainstream Christianity (whatever it might be) has never believed in the total depravity of the Creation. According to the Church Fathers, to say that the bodily existence of ours is an evil thing, is a heresy. The most important thing pertaining to the view of God to the world is, that God never gave se...