Posts Tagged ‘aesthetics’

The famed Swiss theologian Karl Barth once spoke of theology as “the most beautiful of all the sciences”[1] because God, its subject, is beautiful.  Theological aesthetics, by which is meant reflection on the nature and experience of beauty using the categories of the Christian[2] revelation, is a subject that only in the past few years has begun to receive serious attention.  It is, however, one in which theological exposition sheds a unique light on individual doctrine and lends itself naturally to worship and the quest for holiness. Read the rest of this entry »

While mostly everyone will agree that there exist some things that can be described as true or good or at least as false or evil, very few will argue in support of objective beauty.  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is perhaps one of the few absolutes adhered to in our very relativistic age.

According to this popular aphorism, when we state that something or someone is beautiful, it is just an opinion or a way of describing a pleasurable reaction to a person or an object.  Others might disagree, but there are no criteria for judging whether an object itself is beautiful. It is just a matter of taste and thus really doesn’t matter.

In this post I want to demonstrate that it does matter whether beauty is objective. We need to realize the results of contending that beauty is merely a subjective opinion. Here are four negative consequences to denying objective beauty. Read the rest of this entry »

            One of the challenges of a Christian aesthetic or theology of beauty is the cross of Christ.  Hymns, paintings and sculptures have its beauty as their subject.  Crosses are some of the most beautiful jewelry in the world, but how can such a brutal event as the crucifixion of Jesus be seen as beautiful?  Read the rest of this entry »