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Theological Aesthetics and Revelatory Tension
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Much contemporary theological aesthetics treats beauty as straightforward. This is, however, to neglect tensions in our experience and understanding of beauty. The issue of these tensions arises in the examination of the role of the imagination in the epistemology of beauty, as well as in the examination of the relationships between beauty and truth, and beauty and goodness. The treatment of these relationships in the work of Kant and Maritain is assessed. The aesthetics of Kant and Maritain are classic attempts to address and even overcome the tensions in these relationships, but on close examination fail to do so. That writers whose works are often cited in favour of clear-cut positions do not resolve these tensions, and that questions raised by these issues fail to go away, supports the view that these tensions are inherent in our experience and understanding of beauty. If so, and if beauty is understood as in some way revelatory of the divine, it follows that there are tensions inherent in our experience and understanding of beauty as revelatory. Such tensions need to be incorporated into theological aesthetics.
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- Copyright © The author 2008. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2008
References
1 E.g. Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark)Google Scholar in English translation in seven volumes; Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Art in Action, Towards a Christian Aesthetic (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980)Google Scholar; Brown, Frank Burch, Religious Aesthetics, A Theological Study of Making and Meaning (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1990)Google Scholar; Sherry, Patrick, Spirit and Beauty, An Introduction to Theological Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Murphy, Francesca Aran, Christ The Form of Beauty, A Study in Theology and Literature (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995)Google Scholar; Saward, John, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Viladesau, Richard, Theological Aesthetics, God in Imagination, Beauty and Art (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hart, David Bentley, The Beauty of the Infinite, The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003)Google Scholar.
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5 Richard Viladesau, op.cit., p. 149.
6 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics I, Seeing the Form, pp. 39–41 and Richard Viladesau, op.cit., pp. 39–71.
7 For a useful presentation of Balthasar's understanding of the analogy of being, see: Nichols, Aidan OP, The Word Has Been Abroad, A Guide Through Balthasar's Aesthetics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), pp. xiii–xiv, xixGoogle Scholar.
8 E.g. Francesca Aran Murphy, op.cit.; Patrick Sherry op.cit.; David Bentley Hart, op.cit. Of these three writers, Patrick Sherry acknowledges the complexity of our experience and understanding of beauty most. He details both objectivist and subjectivist accounts of beauty, only to assert a strongly realist ontology of beauty mainly on theological grounds (op.cit. pp. 43–49). Ambiguities in our experience and understanding of beauty are thereby precluded from playing a positive role in his theological aesthetics.
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12 There is an ongoing debate on the relationship between acts of violence and films that portray such behaviour in an attractive light. There are also many examples of so-called “high art” that are morally problematic, such as films by Leni Riefenstahl and D.W. Griffiths, and novels by the Marquis de Sade and Henry Miller. Perhaps the most problematic works of art from a moral perspective are not those usually cited; less those works that espose what is immoral, than those works that dull our moral sensibilities.
13 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics V, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Davies, Oliver, Louth, Andrew, McNeil, Brian C.R.V., Saward, John and Williams, Rowan (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), pp. 506–7Google Scholar. Italics not added. For an even more forthright critique of Kant, closely following that of Balthasar, see Francesca Aran Murphy, op.cit., pp. 28–29.
14 Balthasar understands revelation as objective, in the sense of revelation of some reality whose existence and nature is not dependent on the one experiencing the revelation. This realist view of revelation is assumed throughout the article.
15 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Guyer, Paul and Matthews, Eric (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), §32 5:281, 162CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Passages cited from the works of Kant in this article are specified in the following order: section; volume and page number from the appropriate volume of the Prussian Academy of Science edition of Kant's work, Immanuel Kants Schriften, Ausgabe der königlich preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1902); and page number in the English edition. Most English translations have this pagination in the margins of the texts.
16 Immanuel Kant, ibid.,§33, 5.284, p. 164.
17 For a comprehensive treatment of rules of art, see Mary Mothersill, op.cit., pp. 100–144. See also Greater Hippias 290, probably by Plato, for an early criticism of principles of aesthetic merit.
18 Immanuel Kant, op.cit., §6, 5:211, p. 97.
19 Immanuel Kant, ibid., §6, 5:212, p. 97.
20 Immanuel Kant, ibid., §9, 5:217–8, pp. 102–3.
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26 Another argument given by Kant for the subjectivity of aesthetic judgments is that since pleasure is a feeling, and hence non-cognitive, it cannot be the basis for an objective judgment (Critique of the Power of Judgment, §3, 5:206, p. 92). This argument fails since the qualities by which a judgement is made need not be the same as those qualities whose existence is identified in the judgement. A colour sensation, for instance, is in the subject, yet we can assert that the colour is a property of the object. Kant's argument is surprising given that he asserts that we make a judgement of beauty before we experience the pleasure deriving from it (Critique of the Power of Judgment, §9, 5:216–9, pp. 102–4). From this it should follow that the pleasure is simply that by which we are made aware of the presence of beauty.
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34 Jacques Maritain, ibid., p. 3.
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36 Jacques Maritain, ibid., pp. 116.
37 Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, pp. 41–45.
38 See the second quotation from Balthasar above (The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics V, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, pp. 506–7).
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42 Immanuel Kant, ibid., §16, 5:229, p. 114.
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46 Immanuel Kant, ibid., §40, 5:295, p. 175.
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50 Immanuel Kant, ibid., §42, 5:298–9, p. 178.
51 Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, pp. 84–5.
52 See Frank Burch Brown, op.cit., p. 28 and p. 197, n.19.
53 Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, p. 50–1.
54 See Williams, Rowan, Grace and Necessity, Reflections on Art and Love (London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 14, 82–4 for a similar view.Google Scholar
55 Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 70.
56 Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, p. 111.
57 See, for example, the overview articles by Zangwill, Nick and Bender, John W., ‘Aesthetic Realism 1’ and ‘Aesthetic Realism 2’, in Levinson, Jerrold, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar. The first is sympathetic to aesthetic realism, the second is not. Yet neither claims to provide compelling arguments for their favoured positions. Instead they conclude with weaker claims: “Thus, overall, realism better explains the nature of our aesthetic thought.” (Zangwill, p. 78) and “A compelling argument for aesthetic realism has not been forthcoming.” (Bender, p. 96). Similar difficulties at reaching conclusions on the relationship between art and morality are present in Matthew Kieran's overview article in the same volume, pp. 451–470.
58 See Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Theologic I: The Truth of the World, trans Walker, Adrian J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), pp. 80–102Google Scholar.
59 Balthasar does acknowledge some points in common between his aesthetics and Kant's treatment of the sublime. See The Glory of the Lord V, p. 513. An aspect of Kant's aesthetics that also seems amenable to theological aesthetics and is much commented on is his notion of ‘aesthetic ideas’, where the experience of beauty stimulates thinking in our sensory imagination that transcends our sensory capacities to represent it. See Frank Burch Brown, op.cit., pp. 71–2 and Ronald Hepburn, op.cit., pp. 66–7.
60 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord I, pp. 90–117.
61 For a clear summary of some of the problems with Balthasar's “analogy of beauty”, see Viladesau, op.cit. pp. 36–7.
62 Ernst, Cornelius, ‘World Religions and Christian Theology’, in Kerr, Fergus OP and Radcliffe, Timothy OP, eds., Multiple Echo (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979), pp. 34–5Google Scholar.