Hear hear! Great piece (together with your most recent piece). Hoping with you that this paradigm shift reaches wider audiences and gets sustainably engendered. I remember when I was younger singing "What a beautiful name it is" by Hillsong but somewhat cringing as I had a very modern and superficial conception of what beauty is, especially being a dude in his early twenties back then. Nearly a decade later, and here I am thinking daily about theological aesthetics through the prism of Christ, especially since reading (and constantly re-reading) The Ethics of Beauty and participating in an Eastern church despite not being an official member (I get described as the "anglodox" by the members, with a tinge of evangelicalism....).
It really struck me when I read a quote by Romano Guardini that stated that Beauty is manifested when the essence of a form is perfectly expressed. When Truth and Goodness irrupts from within, Beauty is radiantly manifested. And as Christ is the manifest essence of the Father, the perfect expression, the radiance of the Father - He is the fulcrum of Beauty. Heaven meets Earth. Simple, yet I never really thought of describing Christ as Beautiful before given my surface-level conception (that had much to do with appearances and obviously Christ "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him" (Isaiah 53:2).
However, and as you allude to above, the cross is this ugly instrument of torture and crucifixion a terribly ugly thing, but how profound that it is taken up into a higher vision of beauty and speaks to a kenotically cruciform beauty. And this notion of a cruciform beauty is the antidote to deceptive beauty, to beauty without truth, which is a lie.
Thank you for this reflection, I appreciate it. Theological aesthetics is certainly an area of Christian thinking that deserves mighty attention and application!
Hear hear! Great piece (together with your most recent piece). Hoping with you that this paradigm shift reaches wider audiences and gets sustainably engendered. I remember when I was younger singing "What a beautiful name it is" by Hillsong but somewhat cringing as I had a very modern and superficial conception of what beauty is, especially being a dude in his early twenties back then. Nearly a decade later, and here I am thinking daily about theological aesthetics through the prism of Christ, especially since reading (and constantly re-reading) The Ethics of Beauty and participating in an Eastern church despite not being an official member (I get described as the "anglodox" by the members, with a tinge of evangelicalism....).
It really struck me when I read a quote by Romano Guardini that stated that Beauty is manifested when the essence of a form is perfectly expressed. When Truth and Goodness irrupts from within, Beauty is radiantly manifested. And as Christ is the manifest essence of the Father, the perfect expression, the radiance of the Father - He is the fulcrum of Beauty. Heaven meets Earth. Simple, yet I never really thought of describing Christ as Beautiful before given my surface-level conception (that had much to do with appearances and obviously Christ "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him" (Isaiah 53:2).
However, and as you allude to above, the cross is this ugly instrument of torture and crucifixion a terribly ugly thing, but how profound that it is taken up into a higher vision of beauty and speaks to a kenotically cruciform beauty. And this notion of a cruciform beauty is the antidote to deceptive beauty, to beauty without truth, which is a lie.
Thank you for this reflection, I appreciate it. Theological aesthetics is certainly an area of Christian thinking that deserves mighty attention and application!