Biblical Worldview / Philosophy of Aesthetics
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HOLY BEAUTY a Reformed Perspective on Aesthetics Within a World of Unjust Ugliness John W. De Gruchy Much of My Theological Ende
HOLY BEAUTY A Reformed Perspective on Aesthetics within a World of Unjust Ugliness John W. de Gruchy Robert Selby Taylor Professor of Christian Studies Director of the Graduate School in Humanities University of Cape Town Much of my theological endeavour over the years has focussed on the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. During the past decade my focus has shifted to the relationship between Christianity and democratic transformation and, more recently to theological aesthetics and to the role of art in transformation. This latter interest has clearly not meant a lessening of concern for theological engagement with public life. That remains constant both out of the conviction that theology and ethics cannot be separated, and the fact that the struggle against the legacy of apartheid and injustice more generally remains. The transition to democracy requires an ongoing struggle for social transformation. My interest in theological aesthetics, then, is not an opting out of a commitment for social justice but an attempt to address a set of issues that have previously been neglected by those of us who were engaged as theologians in the struggle against apartheid. To emphasise this point let me say that I wrote these words in the midst of a workshop of `Christianity, art and healing’ where the focus was on the new holocaust facing sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Nadine Gordimer, the celebrated South African novelist, has noted that art is `at the heart of liberation.’1 The struggle against apartheid certainly produced an artistic creativity of a remarkable kind and intensity.2 It is remarkable, then, that theologians engaged in the struggle did not take this into account in doing theology. -
The Intermediate World: a Key Concept in Beautiful Thinking
Open Philosophy 2018; 1: 50–58 Dorthe Jørgensen* The Intermediate World: A Key Concept in Beautiful Thinking https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2018-0005 Received February 28, 2018; accepted April 25, 2018 Abstract: The term ‘the intermediate world’ is a key concept in Den skønne tænkning (Beautiful Thinking) and the metaphysics of experience presented by this book. The metaphysics of experience is about the experiences of transcendence and beautiful thinking that take place in the intermediate world. In the article “The Intermediate World,” this subject is introduced through a discussion of thoughts and concepts formulated by Paul Klee (Zwischenwelt), Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (beautiful thinking), Aristotle (phantasia), Immanuel Kant (expanded thinking), Mark C. Taylor (imagination), and Eugenio Trías (the limit). The text depicts the intermediate world as the level of experience at which the understanding does not yet distinguish between subject and object. The intermediate world is thus not a realm between human and world, nor is it something outside the world we know. The intermediate world is rather the present world in its most original state: the ‘place’ where we find the source of all experience and cognition, a source called ‘basic experience’ characterized by sensation, faith, and comprehension. In this realm, imagination is active and takes the form of an objective force rather than a subjective mental power. Imagination opens mind and world, thus allowing not-yet- actualized possibilities to become perceivable. Keywords: experience, metaphysics, Klee, aesthetics, imagination, Baumgarten, sensitivity, Trías, limit, thinking 1 Introduction The expression ‘beautiful thinking’ derives from §1 in Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s Aesthetica. -
ABSTRACT Love Itself Is Understanding: Balthasar, Truth, and the Saints Matthew A. Moser, Ph.D. Mentor: Peter M. Candler, Jr., P
ABSTRACT Love Itself is Understanding: Balthasar, Truth, and the Saints Matthew A. Moser, Ph.D. Mentor: Peter M. Candler, Jr., Ph.D. This study examines the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar on the post-Scholastic separation between dogmatic theology and the spirituality of Church, which he describes as the loss of the saints. Balthasar conceives of this separation as a shattering of truth — the “living exposition of theory in practice and of knowledge carried into action.” The consequence of this shattering is the impoverishment of both divine and creaturely truth. This dissertation identifies Balthasar’s attempt to overcome this divorce between theology and spirituality as a driving theme of his Theo-Logic by arguing that the “truth of Being” — divine and creaturely — is most fundamentally the love revealed by Jesus Christ, and is therefore best known by the saints. Balthasar’s attempted re-integration of speculative theology and spirituality through his theology of the saints serves as his critical response to the metaphysics of German Idealism that elevated thought over love, and, by so doing, lost the transcendental properties of Being: beauty, goodness, and truth. Balthasar constructively responds to this problem by re-appropriating the ancient and medieval spiritual tradition of the saints, as interpreted through his own theological master, Ignatius of Loyola, to develop a trinitarian and Christological ontology and a corresponding pneumatological epistemology, as expressed through the lives, and especially the prayers, of the saints. This project will follow the structure and rhythm of Balthasar’s Theo-Logic in elaborating the initiatory movement of his account of truth: phenomenological, Christological, and pneumatological. -
Beauty As a Transcendental in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger
The University of Notre Dame Australia ResearchOnline@ND Theses 2015 Beauty as a transcendental in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger John Jang University of Notre Dame Australia Follow this and additional works at: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses Part of the Philosophy Commons COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Copyright Regulations 1969 WARNING The material in this communication may be subject to copyright under the Act. Any further copying or communication of this material by you may be the subject of copyright protection under the Act. Do not remove this notice. Publication Details Jang, J. (2015). Beauty as a transcendental in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger (Master of Philosophy (School of Philosophy and Theology)). University of Notre Dame Australia. https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/112 This dissertation/thesis is brought to you by ResearchOnline@ND. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of ResearchOnline@ND. For more information, please contact [email protected]. School of Philosophy and Theology Sydney Beauty as a Transcendental in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger Submitted by John Jang A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Philosophy Supervised by Dr. Renée Köhler-Ryan July 2015 © John Jang 2015 Table of Contents Abstract v Declaration of Authorship vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Structure 3 Method 5 PART I - Metaphysical Beauty 7 1.1.1 The Integration of Philosophy and Theology 8 1.1.2 Ratzinger’s Response 11 1.2.1 Transcendental Participation 14 1.2.2 Transcendental Convertibility 18 1.2.3 Analogy of Being 25 PART II - Reason and Experience 28 2. -
The Proof of Beauty: from Aesthetic Experience to the Beauty of God
ISSN 1918-7351 Volume 2 (2010) The Proof of Beauty: From Aesthetic Experience to the Beauty of God John D. Dadosky I was feeling part of the scenery I walked right out of the machinery My heart going „boom boom boom‟ “Hey” he said “Grab your things I‟ve come to take you home.” Peter Gabriel, “Solsbury Hill” Introduction Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1904-1986) decries the forgetting of beauty in contemporary philosophy and theology. The loss of transcendental beauty implies a separation and collapse of the other transcendentals: unity, truth and goodness. According to Balthasar, Thomas Aquinas represents the climax of Western philosophy as one who is able to ground a philosophy of beauty for a theological aesthetics. Balthasar eschews any contemporary attempts to transpose Aquinas within a post-Kantian context and as a result, Balthasar‟s magnificent attempt to restore beauty within his multi-volume trilogy, Herrlichkeit, Theodrama, and Theologik, is not able to speak to those outside of the Christian narrative. This is because of his prior philosophical presuppositions that rely specifically on special categories (those specific to Christian theology) that do not give enough attention to general categories (those shared with other disciplines).1 For Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), general categories are derived from human intentional consciousness. Consonant with Balthasar‟s suspicion of the philosophical turn to the subject, Lonergan labored to respond to the same turn with Insight: A Study of Human Understanding2 and provides a Catholic 1 Concerning this issue, see Robert M. Doran, “Lonergan and Balthasar: Methodological Considerations,” Theological Studies 58 (1997): 61-84. -
Blue Like Jazz Free Ebook
FREEBLUE LIKE JAZZ EBOOK Professor Donald Miller | 256 pages | 15 Jul 2003 | Thomas Nelson Publishers | 9780785263708 | English | Nashville, United States Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality Blue Like Jazz is a gentle, honest resource for those curious about the Christian faith, or new to it, and offers a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption. "Blue Like Jazz" is not meant to be a deep theological treatise. If you thought it was supposed to be, then of course it doesn't compare to Augustine or C.S. Lewis. Miller's book is instead meant as a memoir of one man's walk with God, his struggles along the way, and what he's learned from them. Blue Like Jazz was extremely well-received at its World Premiere at Austin's Paramount Theater as part of the SXSW Film Festival. This is a powerful film about a young man's spiritual journey from an unthinking fundamentalism to trying to develop a better understanding of his own self. Blue Like Jazz: Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality Blue Like Jazz Quotes Showing of “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. Blue Like Jazz is a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption. Blue Like Jazz is a gentle, honest resource for those curious about the Christian faith, or new to it, and offers a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption. -
Herman Bavinck's Theological Aesthetics: a Synchronic And
TBR 2 (2011): 43–58 Herman Bavinck’s Theological Aesthetics: A Synchronic and Diachronic Analysis Robert S. Covolo PhD candidate, Fuller Theological Seminary In 1914 Herman Bavinck wrote an article for the Almanak of the Vrije Universiteit entitled, “Of Beauty and Aesthetics,” which has recently been translated and republished for the English-speaking world in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society.1 While this is not the only place where Bavinck treats the subject of beauty, this article stands out as a unique, extended glimpse into Bavinck’s theological aesthetics.2 In it we see that Bavinck was conversant with philosophical aesthetics and aware of the tensions of doing theological aesthetics from both a small “c” catholic and a distinctly Reformed perspective. There are many ways to assess Bavinck’s reflections on aesthetics. For example, one could look at the intimations in Bavinck’s works of the aesthetics formulations of later Dutch Reformed writers such as Rookmaker, Seerveld, or Wolterstorff.3 1. Herman Bavinck, “Of Beauty and Aesthetic” in Essays on Religion, Science and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 245–60. 2. See also Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), 252–55. 3. This in itself would prove to be a very interesting study. In one section of the essay Bavinck entertains an idea by a “Mister Berland” who maintains “the characterization of an anarchist situation in the arts.” See Bavinck, “Of Beauty and Aesthetics,” 252. -
Glory Over Sublimity: Karl Barth'S Theological Aesthetics
HeyJ •• (2016), pp. ••–•• GLORY OVER SUBLIMITY: KARL BARTH’S THEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS SCOTT A. KIRKLAND Trinity College, Melbourne, Australia INTRODUCTION: DISPLACING THE SUBJECT OF SUBLIME INTUITION My contention is that Barth deliberately reframes theologically the Kantian conditions for per- ception of the beautiful and the sublime by dispossessing the subject of the normative universal- ity she maintains in Kant’s system of knowing. Barth frames beauty and sublimity instead in terms of the givenness of divine being for us in the form of the Son of God incarnate. Beauty no longer is a subjective apriori; it is rather a product of divine self-giving. Barth therefore finds ways to speak of creaturely participation in this beauty through the playful language of ‘joy’ and ‘happiness’ in the Spirit. We shall focus on Church Dogmatics [hereafter CD] paragraph 31.3, on divine glory; it is here that Barth enters into one of the few explicit discussions of theological aesthetics in the CD. Barth seeks to heal the disjunction created between the beautiful and the good in the second and third critiques by re-thinking the relationship between divine action and divine beauty, see- ing God’s beauty as his action. Beauty [Schon€ ], derived from divine glory [Herrlichkeit], is the crowning moment of CD II.1, the final perfection to be explicated. This is significant, as glory is seen as the exposition of the form of God’s coming in its superfluousness. Glory is God’s hiddenness as it is the revelation of his fullness in a dizzying light. Throughout CD II.1, each of the perfections serves to illuminate another; with none seen in isolation, each is continually destabilised by the excess of God’s revelatory activity. -
Four Perspectives on Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics, by Peter Joseph Fritz Judith Wolfe University of St
Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Theology Faculty Research and Publications Theology, Department of 1-1-2017 Review Symposium: Four Perspectives on Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics, by Peter Joseph Fritz Judith Wolfe University of St. Andrews Gesa Thiessen Trinity College Robert Masson Marquette University, [email protected] Mark F. Fischer St. John's Seminary, Camarillo, CA Accepted version. Philosophy & Theology, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2017): 485–506. DOI. © 2017 Philosophy Documentation Center. Used with permission. Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Theology Faculty Research and Publications/College of Arts and Sciences This paper is NOT THE PUBLISHED VERSION; but the author’s final, peer-reviewed manuscript. The published version may be accessed by following the link in the citation below. Philosophy & Theology, Vol. 29, No. 2, (2017): 485-506. DOI. This article is © Philosophy Documentation Center and permission has been granted for this version to appear in e- Publications@Marquette. Philosophy Documentation Center does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Philosophy Documentation Center. Contents I. .................................................................................................................................................................... 2 II. .................................................................................................................................................................. -
Theological Aesthetics and Performatism in the Aestheticization of the Roman Catholic Liturgy
Obsculta Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 5 July 2014 Theological Aesthetics and Performatism in the Aestheticization of the Roman Catholic Liturgy Audrey Seah College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/obsculta Part of the Christianity Commons, and the Liturgy and Worship Commons ISSN: 2472-2596 (print) ISSN: 2472-260X (online) Recommended Citation Seah, Audrey. 2012. Theological Aesthetics and Performatism in the Aestheticization of the Roman Catholic Liturgy. Obsculta 5, (1) : 16-22. https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/obsculta/vol5/iss1/5. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@CSB/SJU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Obsculta by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@CSB/SJU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Virgin of Paplin&KDVH%HFNHU Theological Aesthetics and Performatism Audrey Seah in the Aestheticization of the Roman Catholic Liturgy 7KH ÁDXQWLQJ RI WKH Cappa Magna, a surge of interest Catholic liturgy. I will begin my examination by juxtaposing in Gregorian chant and renaissance polyphony, and the re- WKHDHVWKHWLFDOSKHQRPHQRQDJDLQVW+DQV8UVYRQ%DOWKDVDU·V turn of elaborate gothic chasubles are just three visible trends theological aesthetics to discern the potential of aesthetics among many that stir up liturgical debates today. Arguments in theology. Then, I will compare the intended outcome of for and against the new aesthetic reforms that span theologi- theological aesthetics to Perfomatism, an emerging cultural cal, philosophical, historical, social and anthropological ap- phenomenon that is manifesting itself in the Church and its proaches are aplenty. Many of these arguments attempt to liturgy. -
The Trinitarian Theology of Irenaeus of Lyons
Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Dissertations (1934 -) Projects The Trinitarian Theology of Irenaeus of Lyons Jackson Jay Lashier Marquette University Follow this and additional works at: https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Lashier, Jackson Jay, "The Trinitarian Theology of Irenaeus of Lyons" (2011). Dissertations (1934 -). 109. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/109 THE TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY OF IRENAEUS OF LYONS by Jackson Lashier, B.A., M.Div. A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2011 ABSTRACT THE TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY OF IRENAEUS OF LYONS Jackson Lashier, B.A., M.Div. Marquette University, 2011 This dissertation is a study of the Trinitarian theology of Irenaeus of Lyons. With the exception of two recent studies, Irenaeus’ Trinitarian theology, particularly in its immanent manifestation, has been devalued by scholarship due to his early dates and his stated purpose of avoiding speculative theology. In contrast to this majority opinion, I argue that Irenaeus’ works show a mature understanding of the Trinity, in both its immanent and economic manifestations, which is occasioned by Valentinianism. Moreover, his Trinitarian theology represents a significant advancement upon that of his sources, the so-called apologists, whose understanding of the divine nature converges in many respects with Valentinian theology. I display this advancement by comparing the thought of Irenaeus with that of Justin, Athenagoras, and Theophilus, on Trinitarian themes. Irenaeus develops Trinitarian theology in the following ways. First, he defines God’s nature as spirit, thus maintaining the divine transcendence through God’s higher order of being as opposed to the use of spatial imagery (God is separated/far away from creation). -
Blue Like Jazz- IFCA
A CRITIQUE OF “BLUE LIKE JAZZ” By Dr. Mike Powell Blue Like Jazz , written by Donald Miller, has sold more than a million copies and is currently being made into a movie, set for release in the spring of 2009. Campus Crusade for Christ and other campus ministries are distributing the book nationwide as a part of their freshman survival kits. I appreciate the author’s transparency about his own struggles, failures and doubts. He addresses many critical issues concerning modern Christianity and provides a number of helpful insights. The author is concerned about many of the same things I am concerned about in the modern evangelical church. 1. Areas Where I Believe That The Author Is “Right On” a. He is reacting against an impersonal legalistic Christianity. Sunday school classes did much to help us memorize commandments and little to teach us who God was and how to relate to Him. 4 For me . there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and that sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine . that dolled out reward based on behavior and, perhaps chance. 8 . the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God. 13 b. He recognizes our fallen nature. Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me .