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Dogmatic Aesthetics: A Theology of Beauty in Dialogue with Robert W. Jenson
Dogmatic Aesthetics: A Theology of Beauty in Dialogue with Robert W. Jenson
Dogmatic Aesthetics: A Theology of Beauty in Dialogue with Robert W. Jenson
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Dogmatic Aesthetics: A Theology of Beauty in Dialogue with Robert W. Jenson

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The identification of God with beauty is one of the most aesthetically rich notions within Christian thought. However, this claim is often at risk of becoming untethered from core Christian theological confessions. To avoid a theological account of beauty becoming a mere projection of our wildest desires, it must be reined in by dogmatics. To make this case, this book employs the thought of Robert W. Jenson to construct a dogmatic aesthetics. Jenson’s whole theological program is directed by exploring the systematic potential of the core doctrines of the faith that finally opens out into a vast vision of the beauty of God and creatures: “God is a great fugue . . . the rest is music.” Taking Jenson’s cue, the account of beauty presented in this book is propelled by a core conviction of Jenson’s theology: the sole analogue between God and creatures is not “being” or any other metaphysical concept, but Jesus Christ.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 1, 2014
ISBN9781451469899
Dogmatic Aesthetics: A Theology of Beauty in Dialogue with Robert W. Jenson

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    Dogmatic Aesthetics - Stephen John Wright

    Preface

    This book proposes a dogmatic approach to theological aesthetics. While interdisciplinary engagement between theology and the arts is increasing, there remains a need for deeper reflection on beauty itself amid the wealth of material that emerges from this joint venture. The great model for any theological exploration of beauty remains Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose monumental fifteen-volume trilogy on the transcendentals—beauty, goodness, and truth—is unmatched in its scope, rigor, and genius. To develop his account of beauty, von Balthasar employs the analogia entis, or analogy of being. This metaphysical doctrine takes various forms, and von Balthasar’s own conception of the analogia entis changed as he wrote. He adopted his earliest form of analogy from Erich Przywara, who taught that created being is inherently open upwards to God. This teaching provoked controversy among many Protestants. In this book, I will present an alternative basis for a theological aesthetics: a dogmatic approach to the topic of beauty that derives its concepts and structure from the doctrines of the church. I will develop this approach through an engagement with the work of the American Lutheran theologian, Robert W. Jenson, who weaves aesthetic insights throughout his entire theology. Though Jenson follows the classical Western tradition and treats beauty as a transcendental, he makes dogmatic choices that revise the conception of beauty. To begin with, he argues that we should not treat being in isolation from the doctrine of the Trinity. Therefore, to say that beauty is a transcendental means that beauty is a transcendental of the particular kind of being that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are together. The chapters of this book follow Jenson’s reflections through a series of doctrinal loci and argue that Christian doctrine supplies the architecture for a theology of beauty. I aim both to comment on Jenson’s explicit discussions of beauty and to argue that the whole shape of his thought opens into a rich theological vision of the beauty of God and the beauty of God’s creatures.

    In the introduction, I will distinguish a dogmatic aesthetics from the interdisciplinary study of theology and the arts. After examining the way in which von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics hinges on the analogia entis, I will probe his understanding of analogy by tracing Barth’s disagreement with Przywara in regard to natural theology. I will then explore the difference between beauty and the sublime as well as the parallel difference between the finite and the infinite in contemporary philosophical discourse. I contend that Christology not only demands reflection on the sublime and its relation to beauty, but that Christology provokes reflection on the beauty of divine form. Following the christological cues of Jenson, I will outline the function of beauty as a transcendental in the theological tradition.

    In the first chapter, I will explore divine beauty in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity, which involves reconciling the concept of proportion in aesthetics with the concept of divine simplicity. I contend that Trinitarian theology provides its own account of internal proportionality within the divine being, and I argue—alongside Jenson—for the Spirit’s unique role as the beauty of God.

    The second chapter explores beauty in relation to Jenson’s Christology. In this chapter, I will argue that Jenson is mistakenly treated as a straightforwardly Hegelian theologian. While Jenson makes some use of Hegelian ideas, his christological focus maintains a critical distance from Hegel’s system. In aesthetic terms, Hegel advocates a sublime infinity while Jenson argues for the beautiful form of God’s revelation in Jesus. A christological conception of beauty must account for the way in which the ostensible ugliness of Christ’s death is involved in beauty, because the crucifixion is the event of God’s work of salvation. Creaturely apprehension of the beauty of God is realized through the contingencies of history; the gratuity of creation’s reconciliation to God is beautiful.

    In the third chapter, I will explore the beauty of creation by arguing that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo gives content to a theology of beauty by upholding the fundamental, proportionate difference between Creator and creatures. Jenson treats this difference as fundamentally aesthetic: God is the artist, and creatures are the art. God creates by giving voice to creation, yet created beauties are susceptible to decline and decay. Rather than treating this mutability as a flaw, Jenson celebrates the gratuity of transitory beauty. By drawing on Japanese aesthetics, I will expand upon Jenson’s insights to argue that the proper mode of creaturely beauty—as distinct from divine beauty—is temporality.

    The final chapter considers beauty in relation to eschatology. Jenson critiques Rudolf Bultmann for depicting a formless eschatological future, and I argue that the poetic language required to evoke the end should not be misunderstood as an empty future. In regard to Jenson’s assertion that Christian hope is a matter of trusting in the word spoken about Christ as the word of the future, I will explore the eschatological theme of the visio dei and argue that, for Jenson, this final knowledge is imparted through both seeing and hearing. Turning to absolute music—an idea of music completely abstracted from language—I will argue that Christian theology posits an eschatological resolution to the opposition between music and language. Perhaps the most memorable moment of Jenson’s Systematic Theology can be found in his claim that God is a great fugue. I argue that Jenson intends this not only as an evocative metaphor but also as a metaphysically descriptive account of the creature’s future life in God.

    Throughout the book, I will employ Christian doctrines as resources for aesthetic thinking and attempt to demonstrate that doctrine can inform a rich and complex aesthetic vocabulary. From start to finish, the book aims to test one of Jenson’s deepest and most distinctive theological convictions as a premise for aesthetic discourse: namely, that the analog between God and creation is not being, but Jesus Christ.

    Introduction

    G. K. Chesterton, in a show of disgust at the sight of a row of telegraph poles, once pronounced, A straight line is always ugly. Beauty is always crooked. What Chesterton overstates is true; beauty is not contained within the uniform or the symmetrical—the merely neat—but branches out in unexpected ways like a tree. Christianity recognizes this truth in its attribution of beauty to God; beauty is primarily located within the divine life, which is unconstrained by principles such as straightness or uniformity. God’s life, at least in its expression towards creatures, is rich with grace, and grace is neither straight nor proportionate—it is gratuitous and untamed.

    This book aims to discuss beauty from a theological vantage point. In the following pages, I will argue for a theological aesthetic derived from Christian doctrine. Theology has its own tools for the aesthetic task that rely on the revelation of God to fill out the content of a christological, and therefore Trinitarian, ontology—a metaphysics—that opens a space for reflection on beauty. This method differs slightly from other approaches to theological aesthetics but does not compete with them. The voices of Hans Urs von Balthasar[1] and Jacques Maritain[2] sustain much of contemporary theological aesthetics, and both make use of the concept of analogy to give purchase to aesthetic claims. Within the Protestant compass, certain Reformed theologies turn to the resources of neo-Calvinism to construct a natural theology subordinate to common grace. Other theologians such as David Bentley Hart argue that without a particular kind of analogy—the analogia entis, or analogy of being—theological aesthetics is impossible.

    I aim to show that the Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson makes use of a Lutheran-Cyrillian Christology modified by a Barthian doctrine of election to outline a revisionary metaphysic in which we can speak of the beauty of God and the beauty of creation. Jenson wants to subordinate theological reflection on beauty to revelation[3] by asking the perennial question, What is it to be? Like Karl Barth, he finds the answer in the self-introduction of God. If God is beautiful and the only knowledge we can possess of God comes through revelation, then the only possible knowledge of the beauty of God is received through the revelation of God in Christ. In terms of creaturely beauty, Jenson argues that the doctrine of election clearly asserts that creatures have their being as participants in the life of Christ. How, then, does beauty manifest itself in the creaturely realm? Jenson sympathizes with the strain of the Western tradition that considers beauty to be a transcendental of being, but for Jenson, this position arises out of the doctrine of election. He modifies the tradition by revising his conception of being christologically. To consider beauty as a transcendental is to consider it convertible not with sublime being but with Jesus of Nazareth. The participation of creatures in being, then, is not a participation in substance but a participation in the life and history of Jesus. In the same way, the beauty of creatures arises not from their openness to the divine but from their inclusion in the life and fate of this particular person, the incarnate Son of God.

    As outlined in the preceding paragraph, this project takes an unapologetically theological approach, but a word should be added about its relation to antecedent philosophical and traditional thinking on beauty and aesthetics. First, the domain of aesthetics can no longer be considered self-evident. Broadly employed, the term aesthetics once rang clear with the idea of the beautiful. Though itself a modern concept, its span has been reduced.[4] The revision began as early as Kant, for whom aesthetic judgments do not bear on an object but rather on the subject making them, usually with universal validity. In Hegel, aesthetics is limited to the sphere of art. Whereas Kant’s sublime is enamored with the terror and danger of the natural world, what Hegel called aesthetics might be better described as a philosophy of art. This reductionism carries over into the contemporary world to the extent that most twentieth-century aesthetics speak only about art, often with little consideration of beauty.

    Three senses of aesthetics remain alive in contemporary theological aesthetics: art, beauty, and sensuous experience. Much theological attention has been directed towards the arts in recent years, and the term theological aesthetics is used mainly to describe the interdisciplinary study of theology and the arts. Aesthetic experience receives less attention and is difficult to analyze because many of the dominant interpretations struggle to distinguish themselves from experience in general.[5] However, the great parent of modern theological aesthetics reserved the term for beauty.[6] Hans Urs von Balthasar took theological aesthetics to be an essential task of Christian theology to construct a dogmatic account of beauty; his fifteen-volume trilogy on the transcendentals dedicated seven volumes to the beautiful, five to the good, and three to the true. Such an account could not be composed solely on the back of philosophical history, for at the point where philosophical conceptions of beauty touch Christian theology, there can be no question of a univocal transposition and application of categories.[7] Von Balthasar was not advocating withdrawal from secular authorities and ideas but rather the priority of theological ideas and the primacy of God’s revelation. Where this ordering is reversed we may find an aesthetic theology but not a theological aesthetics.[8] Commenting on Barth’s brief pronouncements on beauty, von Balthasar writes that a biblical-theological aesthetics . . . cannot orient itself upon any general (‘metaphysical’) concept of beauty, but must obtain its idea of beauty from God’s unique self-disclosure in Christ.[9] This task, and this task only, von Balthasar calls a theological aesthetics, the central task of which is the consideration of beauty arising from the data of revelation in Jesus. A theology that relies too heavily on philosophical aesthetics or extra-theological categories might more properly be called an aesthetic theology. However, the meaning of theological aesthetics has shifted in the relatively short time since von Balthasar’s Herrlichkeit was published, and it now includes projects that borrow heavily from aesthetics for the purposes of theology. For example, Jeremy Begbie’s important project of theology through the arts aims to uncover the theological potential of the arts—particularly music.[10] He carefully makes use of musical insights to recast theology so that the Christian intellectual tradition is richer for the encounter. While Begbie is committed to interpreting all aesthetic data according to a triune understanding of God, his scope is more encompassing: he allows music’s unique language and knowledge to inform theology. Von Balthasar might very well have considered this to be an aesthetic theology. However, the kind of theological work undertaken by Begbie does not entail the subordination of theology to aesthetic theories. Instead, he teases out the ways in which music might contribute to theology while allowing theological tradition to retain its autonomy.

    Beauty

    Of the three senses of aesthetics listed above, my interest here lies with beauty. In this book, I attempt a theological construction of beauty derived from the theology of Robert Jenson. At times, the project will borrow from the domain of aesthetics and the arts, but it will do so on the basis of fides quaerens intellectum.[11] That is, every engagement with aesthetic theory or aesthetic observations will be guided by theological questions. To differentiate this task from the kind of interdisciplinary work pursued by others, I have employed the term dogmatic aesthetics.[12] Jenson often identifies his approach to theology as that of revisionary metaphysics—the attempt to take faith’s most basic utterances and hammer them against the metaphysical structure of traditional theology, until they make more systematic difference than heretofore.[13] Dogmatic aesthetics, as I intend to practice it here, specifically applies this task to theological reflection on beauty and the metaphysics that undergirds such reflection.

    Given the focus on beauty in this book, it is tempting to attempt to offer a definition. In the classical West, the magic of numeracy pervaded all scientific thought; it determined that beauty was found in situations of perfect mathematical proportion. Harmony and symmetry arbitrated between the beautiful and the ugly. Edmund Burke critiques this tradition for its inability to account for the beauties and forms of nature: Surely beauty is no idea belonging to mensuration; nor has it anything to do with calculation and geometry. . . . Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, we find nothing so beautiful as flowers; but flowers are almost of every shape. . . . They are turned and fashioned into an infinite variety of forms.[14] Beauty turns out to be frustratingly difficult to define. In the most ambitious theological reflection on beauty in recent years, The Beauty of the Infinite, David Bentley Hart argues that the language of beauty is one of "imprecision (though one might prefer to say richness) . . . The word ‘beauty’ indicates nothing: neither exactly a quality, nor a property, nor a function, not even really a subjective reaction to an object or occurrence.[15] Yet, the concept of beauty is indispensable to Christian theology. The language of beauty flows from Scripture and religious experience; the alluring nature of God’s revelation in Christ can be described only through aesthetic language. Nonetheless, Hart rightly asserts that a definition of beauty is impossible. Having disavowed the possibility of defining beauty, a theology of beauty then has the task of offering what Hart calls a ‘thematics’ of the beautiful.[16] Jenson also bypasses the opportunity to offer a definition of beauty—in part because of the daunting size of the task, but primarily because a definition of beauty is unnecessary—and instead pursues the questions: What realities are beautiful? Where is beauty found?"[17] For Jenson and Hart, beauty is objective in that it involves an object. Hart’s argument that the word beauty signifies nothing expels the phantasmic from aesthetics: there is no isolatable thing that can be called beauty. Good theological reasoning affirms this reticence to define beauty, particularly for a dogmatic aesthetics. Beauty, if predicable of God, cannot be captured by human concepts or language. Just as in dogmatics the word God is not defined except in relation to revelation, so (for theology) the only definition that can be offered concerning beauty necessarily involves the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    The task of dogmatic aesthetics allows Christian doctrine to direct its enquiry. It does not secure a definition of beauty since it claims that the heart of beauty is divine and beyond definition. Dogmatic aesthetics does, however, attempt to see what difference Christian claims such as Jesus is Lord and these three are one make to our understanding of beauty and created forms. It undertakes this task by occasionally drawing on the arts and the philosophy of art—not because art and beauty are necessarily interconnected but because they frequently intersect. Within the task of dogmatic aesthetics, art, aesthetic experience, and beauty become part of faith’s quest for understanding.

    Analogia Entis

    Von Balthasar divided theological aesthetics into two aspects: beauty and glory. He then set the two in an analogical relation: Earthly beauty always appears limited in a finite being or through a harmonious coordination of finite entities, while God, viewed as the absolute Being and as infinite reality—both aspects of the sole Eternal Life—shines in other, all-transcending and all-pervading indivisible glory.[18] Beauty is the aesthetic aspect of created being; glory is the manifestation of the love of God in the world through Christ. Beauty is discovered through subjective perception; glory comes only through the self-revelation of God. Aesthetics, for von Balthasar, represents something properly theological, namely . . . the reception, perceived with the eyes of faith, of the self-interpreting glory of the sovereignly free love of God.[19] At the heart of this aesthetic bifurcation between glory and beauty is the fundamental difference between God and creatures. According to von Balthasar, glory is regarded as the more important concept, for it performs a ruling and guiding role in its relation to beauty. Though the creaturely senses are most finely tuned to the perception of the beauties of the world, they do not have the capacity to uncover divine glory. If, however, glory and beauty are analogous, it becomes possible to perceive something of the glory of God. Yet, the analogy at work here does not consist solely of language. Von Balthasar argues that only with the analogia entis does knowledge of glory become possible: "‘Glory’ stands and falls with the unsurpassability of the analogia entis.[20] Von Balthasar critiques German idealism for upholding an identitas entis with such rigor that it cannot produce an aesthetics of ‘glory’ but only one of ‘beauty.’"[21] In his theology, the analogia entis underscores the ultimate ontological difference between God and creatures, creating the space necessary for divine glory and creaturely beauty. The first volume of the Herrlichkeit admits that the transcendental movement from nature to grace—which von Balthasar parallels with the transition from philosophy to theology—occurs properly in aesthetics: Crossing these boundaries so forgetfully . . . belongs to the essence of the beautiful and of aesthetics almost as a necessity.[22] In this early volume, von Balthasar seems to be arguing that beauty naturally opens up to glory—that the path of beauty is one of ascent. However, such an ascent is conditioned by the creature’s status as a creature; creatures do not exist in the same way that God does and, therefore, do not possess access to unmediated knowledge. We are ‘enraptured’ by our contemplation of these depths [of beautiful form] and are ‘transported’ to them. But, so long as we are dealing with the beautiful, this never happens in such a way that we leave the (horizontal) form behind us in order to plunge (vertically) into the naked depths.[23] As von Balthasar’s voluminous theological aesthetics reaches its crescendo in the two volumes dedicated to the interpretation of Scripture, he finally discloses that the glory of God is identical with divinity itself,[24] which elucidates why von Balthasar insists on the relation between glory and beauty as a function of the analogia entis. The alternative would be to make divine being identical with the beauties of the world. In this way, analogy wards off an aesthetic immanentism. However, by making so much depend on the analogia entis, von Balthasar hangs his aesthetic hat on one of the most disputed metaphysical hooks of modern theology.

    The controversy over the analogia entis stems from the impassioned finality conveyed in Karl Barth’s indictment: "I regard the analogia entis as the invention of Antichrist, and I believe that because of it it is impossible ever to become a Roman Catholic."[25] From this pronouncement, a flurry of responses has emerged claiming either that Barth has misunderstood the doctrine of analogy or that his critics have misunderstood him. One of the most influential responses came from von Balthasar himself, the very fact of which demonstrates that no discussion of von Balthasar’s writings on beauty should overlook his personal encounters with Barth and the influence these had on the whole direction of his theology. Aidan Nichols claims that, in Barth, von Balthasar recognized a true understanding of what theology should be.[26] In fact, it was von Balthasar’s intent to ease the tension between the Reformed tradition and Catholicism. His book on Barth’s theology opens with a discussion on ecumenism—he desired to make Barth’s thought attractive to Catholics and to make Catholicism attractive to Barth—and claims that, despite Barth’s early judgment on the analogy, his later theology reveals an implicit analogia entis.[27]

    The story of Barth and analogy begins earlier in his encounter with another Catholic theologian, Erich Przywara, who held up a form of the analogia entis as an essential article of Catholic theology. He was moved, in part, to make this argument in response to Barth’s Romans commentary, which articulated such an extreme vision of divine transcendence that it appeared to some as though Barth’s God could not conceivably touch creation in any way. Barth was reacting against liberal Protestantism, but Przywara claimed that it was precisely one-sidedness like his that made an overemphasis on the other side both possible and necessary.[28] Theological formulations of sheer transcendence tend to provoke immanentist responses; however, Przywara argues that the appropriate Catholic response lies in analogy. The analogia entis straddles immanence and transcendence. Przywara grounded his analogy in the teaching of the fourth Lateran council, which teaches that the similarities between Creator and creatures pale before an even greater dissimilitude between the two. In the form of analogy espoused by Przywara, dissimilitude should be stressed.[29] That is, the similarities between God and creatures are not balanced out by a dissimilarity but exist as "ultimately only an analogy—one that at a certain point fails, breaks off, pointing beyond every similitude to the God who is beyond all analogy."[30]

    David Bentley Hart claims that "there could scarcely be a more perfectly biblical, thoroughly unthreatening, and rather drably obvious Christian principle than Przywara’s analogia entis."[31] Barth’s barbarous rejection of the analogia entis, Hart concludes, bespeaks nothing more than his complete inability to understand Przywara.[32] If Hart is correct, then nothing in Barth’s claim would prevent us from basing an aesthetic on the analogia entis—as Hart himself has done. However, the claim circulated by von Balthasar and others that Barth misunderstands Przywara has been challenged in recent years.[33] Keith Johnson argues that Barth understood Przywara quite well, and that, despite von Balthasar’s claim to the contrary, he did not change his mind about the analogia entis later in his career.[34] Barth met Przywara in 1929 when he invited Przywara to speak at the seminar he was teaching on Aquinas. Prior to this meeting, Barth had dabbled with the analogia entis in his own theology. In his 1924–25 dogmatic cycle in Göttingen, he suggested that the human relation to revelation might be in analogy but not in identity with it, as though our thinking and feeling were a kind of outflow or continuation of revelation.[35] The problem, for Barth, was "explaining how divine revelation can occur in and through creaturely realities without becoming part of these realities in such a way that it can be subject to human

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