A Grace of Sense - theological aesthetics

 Martin Luther: speak more good than true "'You are not to bear false witness against your neighbor.' What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light." To speak well of our neighbors, that is the point of the seventh commandment (or the eighth, according to the Orthodox or Reformed reading). There are several aspects of interest here. To begin with, a good reputation is something invaluable for a person. To lose face has always been a disaster, but never has it been such a threat as in the internet era. To ruin someone's reputation has never been as simple to do as it is today. Once suspicion is leveled (about, say, sexual harassment or economic dishonesty) no explanations will suffice to restore the dignity of the suspected one. Even when t...

  In the history of the Western idea of love,  Bernard of Clairvaux holds a major position. Beside his 85 sermons on the Song of Songs, his treatise On Loving God is of a particular interest. Still today recognizable ideas of romantic love emerged in the 12th century in the songs of troubadours. At the same time, theologians discussed the theme of love, to a certain degree in the same vein. However, Bernard did not consider love as a languishing emotion, it was the view of his antagonist, Abaelard (1079-1142). In Abaelard’s opinion, pure love does not expect its fulfillment. Whoever loves God does not think of anything else, not even one’s own salvation. I love God, without considering whether I find my bliss in him or not. Although this idea has some poetic vigor and it surfaces now and then in the history of mysticism, it has the disadvantage of portraying God as a capricious lover who escapes us and plays with our emotions. Bernard’s approach to love in his On Loving God is...

  An idea pointing towards a liberating understanding of the Scripture is derived from Gregory the Great’s Homilies on Ezekiel: "If someone - looking for virtue - should understand some words of God in a sense contrary to that intended by the one who pronounced them, one speaks words of God, as long as one seeks to build up love (even with another interpretation). For throughout Holy Scripture God speaks to us with one purpose only, to draw us to love of himself and our neighbor."( Hom. in Ez. 1.10.14 ) Love as the hermeneutical principle sounds like a modern, almost liberal point of view. However, Gregory is not saying that it does not matter how one understands the Scripture, as long as one maintains good relationships with other people, or something like that. There is more than that in the love of God and neighbor. For Gregory, reading the Bible is a passionate endeavor. One needs to struggle with the Holy Writ, read it attentively, and pray for deeper understanding. Greg...

Religious traditions tend to become systems of oppression and attendants of violence. Subjugation of women in religious societies, as well as the difficult position of sexual and gender minorities among churches serve as examples of the violent undercurrents of sacred hierarchies. To say the least, religious convictions are prone to be conservative, unyielding and unimaginative. This should not necessarily be the case. As a matter of fact, religion can be a source of endless creativity and irresistible hope that cherishes all life in its variety. I suppose this applies to all major religions. In this article I however concentrate on the Western Christianity, the religious tradition I am most familiar with. The history of the Western Christendom is full of power conflicts, prejudice and inflexibility, resulting in condemnations and sheer bloodshed. On the other hand, the very same tradition includes innovations, reforms, religious creativity, tolerance,beauty and love of neighbor. My pe...

  In a world where everything is public and nothing is hidden, our life becomes void of mystery and eventually meaningless. We lose the sense of depth within our hearts (how pathetic these words sound - and how old-fashioned indeed!) What I tend to say is better expressed by Thomas Merton:  "Actually, our whole life is a mystery of which very little comes to our conscious understanding. But when we accept only what we can conceptually rationalize, our life is actually reduced to the most pitiful limitations, though we may think quite otherwise. We have been brought up with the absurd prejudice that only what we can reduce to a rational and conscious formula is really understood and experienced in our life. When we can say what a thing is, or what we are doing, we think we fully grasp and experience it. In point of fact this verbalization - very often it is nothing more than verbalization - tends to cut us off from genuine experience and to obscure our understanding instead of ...

the unicorn  Is it useless to ask for the meaning of life? Or is it arrogant to pretend that one can try to answer that? For many, "The Meaning of Life" suggests hardly more than the Monty Python film in 1983. On the whole, the answers given to the meaning of life are specimens of bird-brained commonsense: "the meaning of life is life itself", "live, laugh, love", "don't worry, be happy".  There are occasions when the search for meaning of life becomes urgent, as when one loses a close friend or a family member, ends up in a divorce, or has serious health issues. In that case it is of no use philosophizing about the perennial question of the meaning of life: "Look, many religions and philosophies have pondered about it, and, ultimately, there is no answer. Go on with your life and try to make the best of it." In an existential situation (as a Tillich or a Kierkegaard would call it) there has to be an answer, or if there is none, it ...

 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...