A Grace of Sense - theological aesthetics

Beauty of the cross Cross – the token of Christianity – challenges the aesthetic reading of the Bible. The prophecy of the Good Friday says precisely, that “he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:2-3) This is the exact opposite of an aesthetic interest! The main artistic problem concerning the image of crucified Christ is that no artist ventures to depict the ugliness of the crucified body as it is (supposing that the image is visible in a church). At the closer scrutiny, the cross of Christ makes the Christian aesthetics possible in its entirety. Without the Son of God who has gone through death and suffering, up to the God-abandonment at the cross, all beauty in the world would be vain entertainment, a deceptive surface that hides the cruel reality. In the end, it is the beauty of our life that gives the ultimate meaning t...

 I feel frightened to enter into discussion on Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88). He is an intriguing figure of the German enlightment and 18th century literature, whom many contemporaries (presumably those who were positively disposed towards him) regarded as an obscure thinker. The less positively disposed thought he has completely lost it. Those who need a magisterial introduction to his theological thinking should consult Oswald Bayer's superb "A Contemporary in dissent" (Eerdmans 2012). I admit that I lack the thoroughness and perspicuity of Bayer's study. Nevertheless, the very boldness of Hamann's writings, his disregard of rules of grammar and philosophy, his appetite for the lowly and contradictory, urge me to read and comment his famous essay "Aesthetica in nuce" (aesthetics in a nutshell). Hamann's texts are a jungle of diverse styles and literary genres where  "exuberant demonstrations of learning" (to employ words of Kenneth Haynes...

  The Greek word καλός may denote beautiful, good, or useful. That is the case with many other languages, too: the word for beauty has several connotations, other than aesthetic.  In the Greek philosophy, there were also several criteria that make beauty beautiful. The most prominent were order (τάξις ), symmetry, and harmony. In a perfect body, harmony of the human limbs were in accordance with the harmony of the universe, of which the musical harmony was a sounding image.  According to Plato, all visible beauty is originated in the idea of beauty. Diotima's celebrated speech in The Banquet begins with beautiful objects, then discusses beautiful soul and beautiful action, and ultimately presents the idea of beauty behind all this.  Beauty is inseparably connected with the moral goodness and the useful. The vehement criticism of art in Plato's The Republic is principally due to the enormous power of art to move the human soul. Compared to Plato, Aristotle's view on k...

  There are several possible approaches to the art among Christians. In the following, I tend to draft them in a cursory manner. 1. Art is harmful for a Christian This extreme view has been promoted by some pietist or monastic movements. The bleakest parts of Leo Tolstoy's aesthetics may suggest this view. Art generally, and music and dance in particular, arouse emotions that provoke lust and lasciviousness. Even when that is not the case, artistic figures and niceties distract the soul from its concentration to prayer and spirituality. To sum, there is nothing good or useful for a Christian in the arts. 2. Art is irrelevant to spirituality According to this view, arts are not bad in themselves. In fact, they may be considered as gifts of God, but they have no spiritual value. They do not belong to the spiritual realm, their virtues are mundane. In that regard art is similar to politics or furniture. 3. Art is a good hobby for a Christian A human being needs pleasurable pastime act...

What is the factor that unites the diverse books of the Bible? What has the Pentateuch common with the Apocalypse, or the Song of Songs with the Pauline epistles? Martin Luther determined the justification of the sinner to be the doctrine that joins all the books of the Bible together, written on every page of it. As persuasive as this view is, it is hardly tenable. Indeed, there are many pages of the Scripture that do not mention the justification of the sinner. Justification is a good nominee for the uniting bond between the various texts of the Bible, but not an entirely satisfying one. I argue that the thing that joins all the literary genres and individual books of the Bible is their aesthetic character. This is not a highly original statement, but rather something very obvious. The aesthetic character of the Bible can be perceived along the following traits: Musicality. Many texts of the Bible are made for singing, Psalms in particular. There are many other songs, too: in the Pro...

Photo: Timo Rasimus The Islamic tradition tells that some people have converted to Islam on account of the sheer beauty of the Arabic of the Qur'an. Lacking the knowledge of the language,  ignorant of the teachings of the Prophet, they have nevertheless grasped the spiritual depth of the text (or, rather, recitation). This kind of religious awakening has hardly other than an aesthetic nature. There is neither theological doctrine nor moral obligation involved. Something strikes a person, changing his or her world at once, and one does not know what it is (a counterpart for the aesthetic nescio quid ). A similar story is told within Eastern Christianity. The conversion of Russians to Christianity happened through (or with a little help of) an aesthetic experience, according to the 12th century Nestor's Chronicle . The envoys of the Prince Vladimir reported, after attending the service in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople: "We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth....

"We know God by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and governmentof the universe, since that universe is before our eyeslike a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1,20." (The Belgic Confession § 2) As a point of departure in this post there is a quotation from a classic Reformed text. Reformed Church is readily thought as the anti-aesthetic branch of Christianity. The Reformed do not have the liturgical richness of the Catholic Church, the musical heritage of Lutheranism, not to mention the visual imagery of the eastern Orthodox Christianity. That notwithstanding, Reformed theology maintains that the beauty of the universe is a way to attain knowledge about God. Jean Calvin himself ( Institutes 1.5.1.) spoke about the "workmanship of the universe", that eventually compels even stupid people to s...