Beauty Redeems the World, part 2
The Aesthetic View of Christianity Christianity can be viewed as a non-aesthetic stance, remote from outer appearances and physical phenomena. Soren Kierkegaard is an advocate of this existentialist reading of Christianity that emphasizes the paradox. “To believe that the artistic helps one into actuality is just as mistaken as to believe that the more artistically complete the sermon, the more it must influence the transformation of life — alas, no, the more it influences life esthetically, the more it influences away from the existential.” This view is discernible in the thinking of modern theologians like Karl Barth or Rudolf Bultmann. Basis for Christian understanding of beauty: creation and incarnation Most of Christian theology can approve the words of John Keats: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Unlike Kierkegaard’s mistrust of the aesthetic, Friedrich Schleiermacher defines religion as an aesthetic endeavor: “Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor actin...