Faith and Beauty: A Theological Aesthetic

by Farley,Edward

• ISBN13: 9780754604549
• ISBN10: 0754604543
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2001-08-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Aesthetics and theological aesthetics usually imply a focus on questions about the arts and how faith or religion relates to the arts; only the final pages of this work take up that problem. The central theme of this book is that of beauty. Farley employs a new typology of western texts on beauty and a theological analysis of the image of God and redemption to counter the centuries-long tendency to ignore or marginalize beauty and the aesthetic as part of the life of faith. Studying the interpretation of beauty in ancient Greece, eighteenth-century England, the work of Jonathan Edwards, and nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophies of human self-transcendence, the author explores whether Christian existence, the life of faith, and the ethical exclude or require an aesthetic dimension in the sense of beauty. The work will be of particular interest to those interested in Christian theology, ethics, and religion and the arts.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Beauty as the Beast: Traditional and Postmodern Expressions	1	(14)
Beauty and the Postmodern	2	(4)
Beauty as the Beast in Christian Traditions	6	(2)
Hebraic and Christian Iconoclasms	8	(7)
Beauty as Being: The Irrepressible Character of Beauty	15	(16)
The `Great Theory of Beauty'	17	(6)
The Olympian Cosmogonies	17	(2)
The Platonic Tradition	19	(1)
The Great Theory in the Middle Ages	20	(3)
The Process Transmutation of the Great Theory of Beauty	23	(3)
Beauty as Being	26	(5)
Beauty as Sensibility	31	(12)
Precursors of the Eighteenth-century Turn	32	(1)
The New Problematic of Beauty in the Eighteenth Century	33	(5)
The Psychological Relocation of Beauty	34	(1)
The Problem of Taste	35	(1)
The Sublime	36	(2)
Legacies and Ambiguities	38	(5)
Beauty as Benevolence	43	(8)
Primary and Secondary Beauty	44	(1)
Beauty as Community	45	(1)
Beauty and God	46	(1)
The Problem of Objectivity	47	(1)
Beauty and Self-transcendence	48	(3)
Beauty in Human Self-transcendence	51	(16)
Human Self-transcendence without Beauty	52	(5)
Self-transcendence as Passionate Subjectivity	52	(2)
Self-transcendence as Intentional Meaning	54	(1)
Self-transcendence as Radical Responsibility	55	(2)
The Aesthetic Aspect of Self-transcendence	57	(7)
Beauty as a Transcendental Condition of Experience	57	(2)
Beyond Self-preoccupation through Beauty	59	(3)
The Beauty of the Graceful Body	62	(2)
Summary	64	(3)
Paths to Beauty in Twentieth-century Theology	67	(16)
Anti-Aesthetic Protestant Approaches to Beauty	68	(6)
Twentieth-century Catholic Theologies of Beauty	74	(9)
The Beauty of Human Redemption	83	(18)
The Image of God as Self-transcendence	85	(4)
Formal and Ethical Self-transcendence	86	(1)
The Image of God as Potentiality and Actuality	87	(1)
The Imago Dei as Beautiful	88	(1)
The Despoiled Image	89	(4)
The Beauty of Redemptive Remaking	93	(8)
Redemptive Self-transcendence	93	(1)
Surmounting the Dichotomy of the Ethical and the Aesthetic	94	(2)
Faith's Aesthetic Sensibilities	96	(5)
Beauty, Pathos and Joy	101	(16)
Beauty and Pathos	101	(2)
Joy: Beyond the Dichotomy of Rigorism and Satisfaction	103	(4)
Faith without Beauty	107	(3)
Arts in the Life of Faith	110	(7)
Synopsis	117	(4)
Aesthetics	117	(1)
Beauty	117	(1)
The Western Story of Beauty	118	(1)
Theological Aesthetics and Redemptive Transformation	119	(2)
Index	121