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The Analogy of Beauty and the Limits of Theological Aesthetics декември 23 - 2012 година
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| 2013-09-03, 6:18 AM |
The Analogy of Beauty and the Limits of Theological Aesthetics
Daniel B. Gallagher
Assistant Professor of Theology
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Introduction
"Aesthetic" approaches to theology are becoming ever-more popular. A glance at a list of published dissertations from any theological school or seminary indicates that the burgeoning interest in theological aesthetics has yet to wane. In many cases, the staggeringly large corpus of the late Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) forms the basis for much of this doctoral work. But younger scholars are also taking note of the aesthetic aspects of theologians as diverse as Paul Tillich, Emil Brunner, and Hans K�ng.[1] Moreover, through the highly influential work of Frank Burch Brown, theological aesthetics is no longer limited to any specific specialization; fundamental, dogmatic, biblical, sacramental, and other sub-disciplines have all been affected by the effervescence of aesthetic interest.[2]
Aesthetic approaches to theology, however, are not new. In fact, a heightened sensibility to theological aesthetics is in large part due to the resourcement movement of the mid-twentieth century. The rediscovery of the patristic tradition by such figures as Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar generated a lively enthusiasm for a Christian apologetics with the power to communicate to a disillusioned world battered by two major wars.[3] But aside from its capacity to communicate to a contemporary audience, a reformulation of the role of beauty in the theological sciences is well grounded in the tradition itself. That is to say that because beauty had played such a critical role in the thought of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius, and others, it had already earned a rightful place in speculative theology before bursting onto the scene in the twentieth century.
Balthasar himself viewed his work as a restatement of ideas already developed by early Christian thinkers.[4] Several scholars of Balthasar's work have highlighted the creative exposition of Romanticism in his work, evidenced, for example, by his great affection for Goethe.[5] Yet the driving force behind Balthasar's staggering theological output was essentially patristic. Balthasar did not so much find an additional locus theologicus in the Romantic movement as he did the stirrings of a human spirit Christianity had embraced all along.[6]
More recently, David Bentley Hart, writing from of the Eastern Orthodox perspective, has offered a systematic account of theological aesthetics encompassing an impressive range of philosophical and theological sources.[7] He provides a particularly incisive critique of post-Kantian and post-modern aesthetic theory. Hart is firmly convinced that theology "must inevitably make an appeal to beauty ... rather than simply 'truth'".[8] Hart's conviction has struck a sympathetic chord in both the Eastern and Western theological traditions.[9] Indeed, aesthetic theology might provide an impetus for greater progress in the ecumenical dialogue in the years to come.[10]
Yet, in the midst of all this enthusiasm, I believe a note of caution is in order. Theologians must be careful not to rush too precipitously into theological aesthetics without due regard for its limits. Theological aesthetics needs to be delineated, or at least kept in check, by counter-realities such as evil, ugliness, and sin. Moreover, theology must not lose sight of the relationship between beauty and the other traditional transcendental properties of being, unity, goodness, and truth. In short, as potent as it may be, aesthetics is yet but a theological approach rather than the theological approach. A study of beauty's role throughout the history of theology shows that these limits were at least implicitly acknowledged from the very beginning. If there was any subordination of the respective transcendental properties of being in respect to their role in theology, beauty was subordinate to the good, the one, and the true rather than the other way around. As I hope to demonstrate, Hart seems to argue for the primacy of beauty over goodness, unity, and truth.
In what follows, I examine some of the more salient points of the aesthetic tradition in theology to draw attention to its limits. I have chosen to pay particular attention to the aesthetic theory of Thomas Aquinas, as he seems to synthesize the Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysical traditions in regard to beauty and its mode of existence in both God and created things. Especially poignant is the underlying doctrine of analogy informing Aquinas' theory of beauty. I then offer a critical analysis of David Bentley Hart's development of an analogia delectationis for aesthetic theology. I argue that setting up beauty as the primary transcendental in theology may risk undermining the distinctive aspects of the good and the true and fail to acknowledge adequately the infinite distance separating sensible and supersensible beauty.
I
Thomas Aquinas, to whom Christian theology in the west is still much indebted, did not develop a systematic aesthetics. Nevertheless, "beauty" (pulchritudo, species, formositas) and "the beautiful" (pulchrum) appear in key sections of the thirteenth-century Dominican friar's work.[11] Beauty, in fact, did not escape the attention of any of the great medieval Schoolmen, primarily because of the enduring influence of Dionysius' On the Divine Names. It had become standard practice in the Middle Ages for any serious university professor to comment on this heavily Platonic work.
Aquinas was introduced to the work of this anonymous sixth-century monk early in his training. We have Thomas' notes scribbled in his vexing litterae inintelligibiles while he was studying Dionysius' work under the direction of Albert the Great in Cologne between 1248 and 1252.[12] From these lectures Thomas composed one of his earliest monographs entitled Quaestiones in librum de divinis nominibus Dionysii. Curiously, Thomas interest in the work of Dionysius did not wane after he embraced the philosophy of Aristotle. He deemed On the Divine Names to be a work of such stature that it merited a commentary rather late in his career; around twenty years after he had heard Albert lecture on Dionysius in Cologne. M. D. Jordan opines that this commentary amounts to little more than a perfunctory work Thomas felt obliged to compose out of respect for his former master and for Dionysius himself (who was thought to be in the company of Athenians listening to Paul preach in the Areopagus).[13] A closer scrutiny of the text, however, reveals that Thomas developed many of his own aesthetic and metaphysical ideas under the inspiration of Dionysius. Conversely, the Aristotelian influence on Aquinas' work can hardly be underestimated. Aquinas held firmly to the Aristotelian teaching on the immanence of forms. He found in Aristotelian metaphysics the impetus for his own ideas on nature, substance, and being. But Aristotle himself does not seem to have elaborated an extensive aesthetic theory. In the Metaphysics, he does not include beauty among the transcendental properties of unity, goodness, and truth.[14] Moreover, his most overt work on aesthetics, the Poetics, does not seem to have merited a commentary by Aquinas. Yet Aristotle's influence does have at least an indirect impact on Aquinas' aesthetic theory.
In Aquinas, we already catch a glimpse of the important crux of the matter when it comes to the role of beauty in theology. Beauty is both transcendent and particular. It is attributable to both God and to things. It is attributable to things both sensible and supersensible. Insofar as it is a "transcendental" property, it is attributable to all things insofar as they exist. But the problem is this: how is it attributable to both God, who is infinite and wholly good, and to things, which are finite and particular? Furthermore, since it can be predicated of any existing thing insofar as it is a being, how is beauty attributable to things that do not appear to the senses as beautiful, or, as in the case of angels, things that do not appear to the senses at all?
Thomas, of course, addressed these difficulties by ingeniously employing a highly refined theory of analogy. In many ways, it is the crucial turning point of his entire metaphysical enterprise.[15] Similarly, it is crucial to our understanding of how to apply his aesthetic ideas theologically. Unfortunately, the ramifications of his theory of analogical predication on theological aesthetics have yet to be fully developed.[16]
Analogical predication generally means that there is a way of speaking about things lying somewhere between univocity and equivocity.[17] To apply a univocal predicate to two distinct things means to apply it in the same way to both of them. "Man", understood as "rational animal", is predicable to both Joe and Harry. We univocally predicate "man" to Joe, Harry, Lisa, or Mary, or any other entity falling under the genus "animal" and possessing the specific difference "rational". To predicate something equivocally is to predicate it in completely separate and unrelated ways to two different things. "Date", for example, applies to an appointment with a significant other, or to the fruit of a palm tree. The word is applied to two different entities, the meaning of which is completely different in each case.
In theological aesthetics, the distinction between univocal and analogical predication often becomes blurred.[18] To speak of both Joe and Harry as "man" is to apply a common concept to two entities alike in every respect needed for us to predicate "man" to each of them. Joe and Harry differ in respect to physical traits, personalities, and accidental properties, yet these differences do not pertain to the essence of what makes each of them a man. Joe is just as much an instantiation of man as Harry. Yet, the one is not the other. They are two completely different "beings" (entia).
But do we face a similar situation when it comes to predicating "beautiful" to both God and a flower? Like Joe and Harry, God and the flower are two completely different "beings". Yet we readily predicate "beautiful" to each of them. God is beautiful, and the flower is beautiful. If we are in a similar situation as when we predicate "man" univocally of both Joe and Harry, we are in a position to say that "beautiful" is predicated of God and the flower in identical ways (even though the two beings themselves are not identical, just as Joe and Harry are not identical beings). Yet, because of the infinite distance separating the types of being represented by God and the flower, we are in a situation quite different from that of Joe and Harry. We are accustomed to describing the beauty of created things in terms of formal properties that involved the arrangement and organization of material components. In God, however, there are no material components to speak of or to arrange.[19]
The foregoing analysis reveals that the analogical predication of beauty is ultimately grounded in the analogical predication of being. Aquinas considered the analogical predication of being to be at the heart of the Heraclitan and Parmenidean quandaries emerging from the pre-Socratic philosophers.[20] Aquinas' own knowledge of this philosophical problem was acquired through the mediation of Aristotle. He expanded upon Aristotle's own insights into the problematic with his unique and far-reaching metaphysical principles. The problem of the one and the many, Thomas taught, came about as the result of a confused notion of being as a genus.[21] "Being" is not predicated of entities in the same way that "man" is predicated of Joe and Harry. Whereas many ancient, and not a few medieval, philosophers treated esse as a univocal predicate, according to Thomas it is in fact predicated analogously; not only in respect to completely different types of beings such as God and a flower, but even, according to Thomas, entities which are identical in respect to genus and specific difference, such as Joe and Harry (though the nature of the analogy is itself different in each case). "Ens enim non est genus, sed multipliciter dicitur de diversis -- For being is not a genus, but is predicated of different things in different ways."[22] Aquinas teaching on the analogical predication of being clearly impacts his understanding of the transcendental predictability of the good, the true, and the beautiful. If being is predicated of different things in different ways, it follows that the good, the true, and the beautiful are predicated of different things in different ways. The analogical predication of being implies the analogical predication of the transcendentals. Because Aquinas had so much less to say about the beautiful than about the good and true, it has been left to neo-Thomists to expand upon the implications of beauty and transcendental predication.[23]
We must recall that, according to Aquinas, transcendental properties are those properties which can be predicated of anything that exists insofar as it exists. The transcendental properties are distinguishable from being because they add something conceptually to being while remaining coextensive with being.[24] Aquinas' own explication of this teaching is most clearly stated at the beginning of De veritate. Although he lists being, the one, the true, and the good among the transcendental properties, the beautiful is conspicuously absent. Its omission from the list has been the source of endless debate regarding the transcendental status of the beautiful understood both as a historical question and as a speculative metaphysical question. There are those who, like Francis J. Kovach, vociferously argue for its transcendentality.[25] On the other side of the debate are scholars such as Jan A. Aertsen, who in Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas, deny beauty's status among the transcendentals on the grounds that it does not add any further conceptual content to the good.[26] John F. Wippel, a distinguished scholar of Thomas' metaphysical thought, is notably silent on the issue.[27] Jacques Maritain and Umberto Eco both argue for beauty's transcendentality, although there are significant differences between them regarding the metaphysical import of the issue.[28]
Jacques Maritain is notable for his articulation of the transcendentality of beauty in a way that closely resembles Aquinas' description of the analogy of being. The substance of Maritain's argument is that if beauty is a transcendental, and if being is everywhere various, then beauty is everywhere various.[29] To put it somewhat elliptically, there is an analogy of analogous predication when it comes to being and beauty. Beauty, according to Maritain, is predicated "sub diversa ratione." Maritain is quick to add that such is the case with the other transcendentals: "Each kind of being is in its own way, is good in its own way, is beautiful in its own way."[30] Maritain implies that, just as with being, the difference separating the predication of beauty to God and to created things is infinite in comparison to the difference separating the beautiful as predicated of two different created things. Maritain argues that each kind of being is beautiful in its own way. However, he certainly adheres to the Thomistic principle that God cannot be considered a kind of being. God himself is being (suum esse subsistens).[31] Thus, just as there is an infinite distance separating the way God exists from the way creatures exist, so there is an infinite difference separating the way God is beautiful from the way creatures are beautiful. Nevertheless, analogous predication allows us to speak of the existence of both God and creatures, and the beauty of both God and creatures, in ways that are meaningful and enlightening.
However, theology has traditionally handled beauty quite differently from the way it has handled the one, the good, and the true. As enticing as it is to make it the keystone of theological enquiry, beauty proves to be the most elusive and ambivalent of the transcendental properties. Beauty distinguishes itself from the true and the good because it is so intricately tied to the senses and the sensible. Perhaps this quality of the beautiful is the reason for the lack of an explicitly categorical treatment of the transcendentality of beauty in the Thomistic corpus. Long before Thomas, the fathers of the church demonstrated unmistakable ambivalence as to the role of the beautiful in theology. Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, and John Chrysostom were all cautious in their estimation of beauty's role in theology.[32] Even Tertullian, who showed greater liberality in incorporating sensible beauty's capacity to lead to knowledge of God, viciously attacks the sensual allurement of feminine beauty in his tract On the Apparel of Women.[33] The ascetical, dualistic, and iconoclastic movements appearing in the history of the Church all attest to the uneasiness Christians have felt in the face of the beautiful.[34]
Yet, there are hints that Aquinas perceived a continuity between transcendental beauty (both in a metaphysical sense and in a theological sense) and aesthetic beauty. He seems to move back and forth between the transcendent and aesthetical notions of beauty with relative ease. For example, his famous formulation of the three essential characteristics of aesthetic beauty - i.e. integrity, proportion, and clarity - appears in a reply to an objection pertaining as much to the transcendent order as to the sensible order.[35] The question posed in the Prima pars of the Summa Theologiae is "whether the sacred doctors have correctly designated essential attributes to the persons of the Trinity." Thomas wants to argue that those theologians who have assigned beauty primarily to the second person of the Trinity have done so with good reason.
Granted, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, is the only incarnate and visible person of the three. Thus, if Thomas desires to emphasize the sensible qualities of beauty, naturally he, and the sacred doctors who preceded him, would assign them to the Son rather than to the Father or to the Holy Spirit. However, the beauty of which Thomas speaks is not simply the visible beauty of the Son as seen in Jesus of Nazareth, but rather the beauty of the second person of the Trinity as existing from all eternity before having taken flesh in the womb of the virgin Mary, and as the person who has ascended back to the Father in heaven. Thus, the context in which we find this passage describing the essential characteristics of the beautiful is necessarily transcendent. Nonetheless, Thomas does not hesitate to apply aesthetic qualities whose primary subjects of predication are sensible realities to the beauty of the second person of the Trinity.
Here, in bringing together sensible beauty and transcendent beauty, Aquinas relies heavily on the principle of analogical prediction. The three essential qualities of aesthetic beauty are applied analogously to supersensible beauty as it exists in the second person of the Trinity. A closer look at the reasons for which Thomas attributes beauty, which he refers to in this article as species or pulchritudo, most properly to the second person of the Trinity will help us to see more clearly how he employs the analogy between supersensible beauty and sensible beauty. Thomas relies upon the authority of Hilary of Potiers to justify the appropriation of beauty to the second person. Hilary assigned the property of "eternity" to the Father, "beauty" to the Son, and "use" (usus) to the Holy Spirit. Earlier in this same article, Thomas lists, in order, four considerations of the thing insofar as it is known to us. The first of these considerations he calls "absolute" in the sense that we know a thing, above all, as an existing thing of a certain kind. The consideration is that the thing exists as a unity. Thirdly, we can consider a thing in respect to its power to operate on its own and to cause change. The fourth consideration involves the disposition (habitudo) of a thing towards its effects.
It is in regard to the first of these conditions that Hilary, and consequently Thomas, designates "beauty" as most proper to the second person of the Trinity. The second person, considered as distinct from the other two, exists as a certain kind. The "kind" of person the Son is best captured through the notion of beauty. Thomas is cautious to note that "kind" cannot be understood as univocally equivalent to "essence" here. Unlike created things, God exists only as one, perfect essence. Although Joe and Harry may share the same human nature, the substance that constitutes each of them as a really existing man is utterly unique. The material component of each of them, having been informed by a unique and distinct soul, creates a suppositum which allows us to predicate "man" univocally to both of them. The case is quite different for God. As Thomas argues earlier, each of the persons shares fully and perfectly in only once essence.[37] Thus, the beauty most proper to the second person it is not a beauty that renders the Son to be of a different essence from the Father and the Holy Spirit. The same holds for the Father's "eternity" and the Holy Spirit's "use". Thomas writes, "et sic patet quare aeternitas, species, et usus Personis attribuantur vel approprientur, non autem essentia vel operatio."[38] In sum, Thomas attributes "beauty" to the second person of the trinity precisely insofar as he is a distinct Trinitarian person and not insofar as he is God, for it is on account of his personhood that we consider the Son according to the first of Thomas' four considerations. The Son's beauty allows us to designate him as "this thing of a certain kind."
Thomas justifies the attribution of beauty to the Son by noting certain features of the Son's filial relationship to the Father and by relating these features to each of the three essential qualities of beauty: integrity, proportion, and clarity.[39] Insofar as the Son has within himself the perfect nature of the Father, "integrity" assimilates to that which is proper to the Son as the second person of the Trinity. Thomas cites a passage from De Trinitate in which Augustine argues that Paul predicates immortality to God as Trinity rather than simply to God as Father. From this passage, Thomas seems to reason that since the Son shares the immortality of the Father, the Son shares perfectly in the nature of the Father. This, Thomas argues, is the reason for which integritas is most aptly applied to the Son. The Son's "wholeness" as a person, so to speak, has its origin in the complete sharing of the Father's nature.
Proportion, the second essential quality of beauty, pertains to the Son insofar as he is the "expressed image" of the Father. Interestingly, Thomas here seems to connect proportionality to the Platonic idea of mimesis. In regard to this second essential characteristic of beauty, Thomas writes that "aliqua imago dicitur esse pulchra, si perfecte repraesentat rem, quamvis turpem."[41] The Son, Thomas argues, since he perfectly represents the Father, exhibits the characteristic of perfect proportionality. Thomas once again invokes Augustine in support of the argument. Finally, he argues that claritas belongs to the Son insofar as he is the Word, or, as John Damascene puts it, the light and splendor of the intellect.
For our purposes, it is important to note that all three essential characteristics of the beautiful, as they are appropriated by the second person of the Trinity, are applied in an analogical way. They do not belong to the Son in a wholly transcendent way, but neither do they belong to him in a wholly aesthetic or sensible way. Integrity is predicated of the Son because he shares fully and perfectly in the nature of the Father. Thomas' assertion is not to be taken as an application of integrity to the second person as existing only in the abstract. Jesus shares fully in the Father's nature not only as the "pre-incarnate" only-begotten Son, but as the only-begotten Son who has taken flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
In addition to analogy, it is crucial to understand Aquinas' doctrine of visio for an adequate understanding of his aesthetic theory.[42] The doctrine hinges upon a distinction between the perception of the beautiful through the senses and the intellection of the beautiful that comes about as the result of the aesthetic visio. Obviously, not all things appear to the sense of sight, nor to the other senses for that matter, as beautiful. Yet, if beauty is a transcendental property concomitant to being, all things are said to be beautiful in a transcendental way. Consequently, it is the aesthetic visio as pertaining to the intellect that is most important to a system of theological aesthetics. Building upon the preceding tradition, Aquinas developed a notion of visio far surpassing mere sense knowledge. Jacques Maritain elaborated upon the Thomistic notion of aesthetic visio in his own theory of poetic intuition.
Umberto Eco has also underlined the need to understand Aquinas' aesthetics in the context of the medieval notion of visio. Medieval theologians turned to the metaphor of light continuously because it draws attention to the immateriality and immediacy of intellection. Our modern understanding of sight as a type of physical stimulation of sensory organs through a combination of material and non-material means may be helpful from a physiological point of view, but it mitigates our ability to grasp the theological nuances of the term in Aquinas and other medieval authors. If, as Thomas held, beauty is primary to the senses of seeing and hearing (as opposed to smelling, tasting, and feeling), then it relates most directly to the faculty of understanding (intellectus). At the same time, because the senses simultaneously delight in the perception of a beautiful thing while it is being grasped by the intellect, there must be some analogy between the sensible qualities of a beautiful thing and the thing as apprehended by the faculty of the understanding in the act of intellection. But these sensible qualities in themselves are not what give rise to the three formal characteristics of the beautiful. All of them pertain to the object as a whole, and all of them refer to the ways in which these sensible qualities relate to the intellect.[43] Integritas pertains to the unity and completeness of a beautiful object as a whole. Proportio refers to the harmonious interrelations between the parts of a beautiful object. Claritas refers to the intelligibility of a beautiful object as it is presented to the intellect for what it is. Common to all these characteristics is the way in which, together, they dispose the faculty of understanding to apprehend the beauty of a thing as perceived by the senses.
II
The foregoing examination of Aquinas' aesthetics reveals that while he certainly pursued aesthetic lines in his theological inquiry, he at least tacitly acknowledges the limits of such an approach. God is said to be beautiful in a way that is both similar to and different from sensible beauty. The qualities of integrity, proportion, and clarity that are essential to aesthetic beauty can be predicated of God, and especially to Jesus Christ, in an analogous way. Because of the affinity of the beautiful to the good, Thomas likely presumed that everything he taught concerning the goodness of God applies to God's beauty as well. The beautiful is a perceived manifestation of the good.[44]
The affinity of the beautiful to sensible properties makes it unique among the transcendentals. Beauty, more than unity, goodness, and truth, oscillates between the sensible and the intellectual, the concrete and the universal. It totters more precariously on the precipice between complete abstraction and total particularity. Its groundedness in the sensible and finite world appeals to the modern mind, while its implicit claim to infinity and transcendentality makes it especially appealing to post-modern sensibilities. David Bentley Hart attempts to keep these two in balance. He sees a golden opportunity in Kant's failure to bridge the pure and practical intellects through the sublime, but he is highly critical of the post-modern attempt to capitalize on that failure as an opportunity to engulf being within rationality.[45] This, Hart argues, leads to an aesthetics of violence. Both the speculative and practical intellects are enervated in the presence of the sublime, making way for the imagination and its act of pure play. However benignly Kant wished for the theory of the sublime to unveil the infinity of the cosmos, Hart convincingly argues that the exaltation of the imaginative faculty ends up doing "violence to reason," provoking "reason to respond with a contrary violence."[47] Hart groups the post-Kantian elaborations of the sublime into four narratives: the differential sublime, the cosmological sublime, the ontological sublime, and the ethical sublime. Each of them paves the way toward an anti-aesthetic that legitimizes the will to power. Insofar as the will to power unleashes an ultimate antipathy to difference, it eschews the seemingly duplicitous claim of Christianity to offer absolute victory through complete self-abasement.
Hart believes that between post-modern disillusionment and the futile attempt to reassert a totalitarian metaphysics in theology, there is a third way. This third way "accepts the irretrievability of purely dialectical 'truth' but still rejects the metaphysical assumptions of postmodernity."[48] This, suggests Hart, is the way of a genuine theological aesthetics. Part II of Hart's book patterns itself on this third way. He dubs his methodology as a dogmatica minora based on the structure of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol.[49] He moves progressively, though not, he admits, systematically, through the four discrete moments of the creed: Trinity, creation, salvation, and eschaton. Drawing heavily on the thought of Gregory of Nyssa, but not ignoring other revered sources of the tradition such as Augustine and Aquinas, Hart carefully draws the contours of a theological tradition thoroughly steeped in rhetorical and analogical discourse from the very beginning. He teases out the fine threads of ontological differentiation and infinitude that make up the aesthetic strand running through two millennia of Christian thought. Only a Christian philosophy, he claims, can offer a harmonious whole of difference in unity and unity in difference that distinguishes it from every other purely philosophical enterprise in metaphysics.[50]
Compelling though it is, Hart's argument fails to take seriously the limits of aesthetics implicit throughout the history of theology and summarized by Thomas Aquinas. At first it seems that Hart adopts an aesthetic stance toward theology primarily for "rhetorical" reasons.[51] That is to say that by framing theological questions and the responses to those questions within aesthetic categories, the Christian theologian discovers a more persuasive mode of expressing the Gospel message to a post-modern world. However, by proposing a "third way", it seems rather that Hart opens the door to a certain systematic superiority of aesthetic categories to express the content of the Christian creed. He writes:
"...my arguments are ultimately not so much apologetic as dogmatic; I do not, though, like to separate these things to absolutely. I presume that a credible defense of Christian rhetoric can be undertaken only from within Christian doctrine; because the church makes its appeal first by pursing its own dogmatics, by narrating and renarrating itself with even greater fullness, hoping all the while that the intrinsic delightfulness (and, of course, truthfulness) of this practice will draw others into its circle of discourse."[52]
Hart makes an important point. The Church makes its appeal first by pursuing its own dogmatics, but there is an essential tension in this appeal. By pursuing its own dogmatics, the Church pulls away from the world, so to speak, as much as it tends toward it. Paul expresses this tension through his contrasts of spirit/flesh, wisdom/foolishness, and grace/law. Hart parenthetically adds truthfulness to the category of delightfulness, but the same tension expressed through the Pauline categories is inherent to the relationship between truthfulness and delightfulness. The category of delightfulness encapsulates both aesthetic (sensible) and transcendental (metaphysical) beauty. For this reason, mystical theology in the West, especially as found in the writings of St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, carefully distinguishes between these two closely related types of beauty. While acknowledging the delightfulness proper to sensible beauty, John of the Cross teaches a strict doctrine of detachment from worldly delights through a disengagement of the senses.
A survey of the patristic tradition reveals that ancient authors were quite aware of the tension between sensible beauty and supersensible beauty. The limits of an aesthetic approach to theology are implied in the way patristic authors employ the analogy of beauty. In Augustine's famous confession of God as Beauty "so ancient and so new," for example, we find a contradistinction between physical beauty and divine beauty that shies away from the similarity expressed through the analogy in favor of the dissimilarity: "For behold Thou wert within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou has made."[55]
Hart goes further than other recent authors in his suggestion that a "credible defense of Christian rhetoric can by undertaken only from within Christian doctrine."[56] John Macquarrie, for example, sees the Christian message as capable of a variety of modes of expression, each of which has a unique rhetorical force corresponding to the particular historical circumstances in which it is preached.[57] Macquarrie, like Hart, harks back to the eighteenth century as the turning point for a new expression of the Christian message. Whereas Hart sees the main catalyst of this change in Immanuel Kant, Macquarrie points the finger at the Enlightenment and the French encyclopedists. Macquarrie gives less credit to post-modern attempts to resolve the Kantian impasse between the pure and practical intellects than does Hart. He argues that a post-Enlightenment Christology must have five features: (1) It should be ecumenical; (2) it should start "from below"; (3) it should use of minimum of historical data about Christ; (4) it ought not to be unduly metaphysical;[58] and (5) it must not make atonement so objective that it "takes place behind our backs." Clearly, Macquarrie's reasons for adopting an aesthetic approach to theology are much different from Hart's. His desire to start "from below" and to minimize the metaphysical aspect of theology distinguishes him sharply from Hart. Yet his fifth and somewhat cryptic requirement for post-Enlightenment theology does seem to have some affinity with what Hart means by the intrinsic delightfulness of Christian dogmatics. By favoring the givenness of atonement over its objective truthfulness, the post-Enlightenment mind will be persuaded by the inherent beauty of the Paschal mystery of Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection. By minimizing the historical data about Christ, post-Enlightenment theology will appeal to the intrinsic persuasive power of the Gospel message in its subjective apprehension.
I draw attention to this parallel between Hart and Macquarrie to show that both make an appeal to the persuasiveness of Christian rhetoric, but each on a very different metaphysical basis. Hart does not want to dispose of the metaphysical basis for Christian aesthetics, whereas Macquarrie believes that an excessive reliance on metaphysics risks compromising Christian rhetoric's persuasive force. Even though Hart, unlike Macquarrie, does not believe that the delightfulness and truthfulness of Christian dogmatics need necessarily be at odds, he posits delightfulness as the primary category through which the Christian message both presents itself and is apprehended by the subject. In doing so, he does not leave enough room for the tension the subject experiences between delightfulness in worldly beauty, which can lead to aestheticism, and delightfulness in divine beauty. I have argued that this tension can only be understood within the context of analogical predication, by which the difference between created beauty and uncreated beauty is just as comprehensible as the similarity between them.
In all fairness to Hart, he by no means ignores nor even side-steps the issue of analogy. He rejects Robert Scharlemann's bold assertion that the anologia entis, because it places "being" above God, is powerless to support theism. Scharlemann's conception of the analogy of being, Hart observes, "leaves being in a state of vacuous and ungraspable imprecision, and can serve only to obscure the way God is near to creatures."[60] Furthermore, Hart does acknowledge the importance of difference in the analogia entis.
Insofar as analogy describes the way in which creation manifests the God who gives being, difference is the first term of the likeness, and speaks of the Trinitarian God who always has distance and difference. And so analogy widens the interval of difference even as it closes it, asserts an even greater dissimilitude embracing every similitude. Such is the nature of the ontological difference that analogy identifies: the God whose "infinite form" comprises all distance is himself the distance, the interval, between God and creation.[61]
It is here that Hart's method of arguing from the internal dogmatic structure of the Christian creed becomes most evident. The basis for the difference and otherness between God and creatures expressed through the analogia entis is grounded in the very difference and otherness inherent in the Trinity. The distinctness of each of the divine persons creates space for the distinctness of God the Creator in respect to his creatures. It is precisely from the sameness in difference that the rhetorical power of Christian discourse derives. "Analogy," writes Hart, "is that infinitely open rhetoric that is still always exceeded by, and is always reaching out toward, the plenitude of the truth into which the Holy Spirit leads, the divine utterance by which God is God." For this reason, "analogical reasoning must be understood, before all else, as a dynamic movement of thought toward the 'whole infinity' of God." Hart conceptualizes the analogy of being not as a vertical determination of participated being in creatures, but rather as way of ascending along a diagonal trajectory toward God by delighting in the very similarity in difference proposed by the Trinity.
It is not clear whether Hart views his task as one of reformulating or of transforming the tradition of analogical predication. Be that as it may, the degree of accuracy with which he interprets the tradition of analogical predication is open to debate. Hart argues that Aquinas, following the Dionysian line, places the discussion of analogical predication "under the topic of the names of God, not within a discussion of divine attributes." Hart further delineates this distinction by contrasting the metaphysics of participation articulated through the analogical predication of names with the "univocal" ontological approach to analogy that turns to the predication of divine attributes. He does not, however, offer a compelling argument for such a neat distinction between names and attributes. Far from being a nominalist, Dionysius maintained an intimate connection between names and attributes running through his entire oeuvre. Aquinas' commentary Super de divinis nominibus reveals that he too saw an essential interrelation between the divine names and the attributes of the divine essence designated by those names. Nevertheless, Hart believes that a new type of analogical predication is needed for a robust post-modern theology.
III
Hart paves the way toward this more robust theology by introducing a fresh term to get at the heart of the analogy between God and creatures. He has already noted the weakness of the traditional metaphysical and moral analogies in the post-modern world. Hart advocates an analogy that draws its inspiration from the creative power of the artist and his relationship to the being of his work. "Christian talk of an analogy between the being of creatures and the being of God is something like speaking of the irreducible difference and yet declarative relationship between the being of a work of art and the creative being of the artist."[66] The free and unnecessitated act of artistic creation attunes us to God's creative act as an expression of the Trinitarian perichoresis. Against this background, Hart proposes the category of analogia delectationis as a means of understanding the similarity in difference between God and creatures. "The analogy," he writes, "is a disjunction and difference, while also being the interval of creation's participation in the being that God gives as his gift."[67] Hart argues that the delightfulness of created things can carry us to the delightfulness that subsists in the Trinitarian God existing in infinite distance from His creatures. Only delight, therefore can "understand the grammar" of creation.[68]
Hart then goes on to boldly suggest that we may be able to conceive of the transcendental categories of goodness and truth as subordinate to beauty insofar as they are derived from it as a consequence of sin.
"Indeed God's affirmations of the goodness of his creation in the first chapter of Genesis can be taken as indicating first and foremost that the goodness of creation must be conceptually separated into solitary transcendental categories, and only with sin that creation is seen to possess a distinct ethical axis. One might almost say that the separable category of the moral is an intrusion upon the aesthetic joy that is the upwelling source of creaturely existence, as is a separate category of truth once the paradisal experience of divine love in the blameless beauty of creation is lost."
Hart's suggestion practically reverses the Thomistic schema of the transcendentals according to which unity, truth, and goodness are primary to beauty. As we have seen, Aquinas did not explicitly list the beautiful among the transcendentals because of its close affinity to the good. Hart suggests that the direction of the interrelationship between these two transcendentals might be more properly conceived as moving from the beautiful to the good rather than from the good to the beautiful. In his loving act of creation, God has communicated to creatures a share in Triune "delightfulness" (delectatio). Through the freely made choice of rejecting this delight at the fall, man is subjected to a condition in which the good and the true, as derived from the primary transcendental of the beautiful, become necessary categories for grasping what was originally only beautiful. Hart proposes the analogia delectationis as a framework for understanding what is at the root of goodness and truth in this world: namely, beauty. Whereas the ancient and medieval tendency was to approach beauty cautiously because of its primary reference to the sensible, Hart proposes delight, provoked by beauty, as precisely the type of grammar that will render Christian rhetoric persuasive in the post-modern world. The limits, so to speak, are now drawn around goodness and truth, and beauty alone has the ultimate power to inform a rhetoric that will lead to a fuller understanding of the analogy between God and the world.
Conclusion
Hart makes a strong case for the power of theological aesthetics to respond to the post-Kantian philosophical legacy that has recognized the sublime as the only means of bridging the pure and practical intellects. He has an extraordinary breadth of knowledge of twentieth-century philosophy. He also plumbs the depths of ancient and patristic Christian sources to uncover the building blocks for a new theological aesthetics. However, he also exemplifies a type of unbridled optimism in the power of aesthetic theology to confront the challenges of post-modernism. Establishing beauty as the primary transcendental category for theology runs the risk of eschewing the ambivalent way in which we experience the beautiful in the sensible world. The effects of original sin have debilitated man's capacity to apprehend beauty as an analogous concept connecting the sensible to the supersensible. The experience of delight, even when it is genuinely aesthetic, too easily leads to aestheticism. The transcendentals of goodness and truth do not run the same risk. Consequently, Aquinas deliberately ties beauty (pulchrum) to goodness (bonum) so that the elaboration of the good as an object of the will may serve as the theoretical framework for understanding beauty as an object of the intellect. Aquinas would have been reluctant to join Hart in relegating goodness and truth to a secondary status among the transcendentals based on their necessary derivation from beauty in the wake of sin. If theological aesthetics is to break new ground while remaining faithful to the long legacy of carefully distinguishing between aesthetic and transcendental beauty, it will be important for its practitioners to take stock of its inherent limits.
Notes:
[1] Particular attention has been devoted to Paul Tillich, "Art and Ultimate Reality," in Writings in the Philosophy of Culture (New York: De Gruyter, 1990); Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative: A Study in Christian Ethics, trans. Olive Wyon (London: Lutterworth Press, 1937); Hans K�ng, Art and the Question of Meaning, trans. Edward Quinn (London: SCM Press, 1981).
[2] Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning (London: MacMillan Press, 1990).
[3] See Aidan Nichols, The Word Has Ben Abroad: A Guide through Balthasar's Aesthetics (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998).
[4] See "A R�sum� of My Thought," Communio, Vol. 15 (1988).
[5] See, for example, Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Continuum, 1994).
[6] "All the unifying principles of the ancient world - such as the Logos of the stoics, the Neoplatonic hierarchy of being rising from matter to the supraessential One, the abstract majesty of the unifying power of Rome - all these were regarded as baptizable anticipations or the God-Logos in person who entered Israelite history, filled the whole world, in whom were the Ideas which were the pattern by which the world was made, and in relation to whom the world could be understood." Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone: The Way of Revelation, trans. Alexander Dru (London: Burns & Oates, 1968), 12-13.
[7] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). (Hereafter, Beauty of the Infinite).
[8] Beauty of the Infinite, 3.
[9] See reviews by Donald Essman in Reviews in Religion and Theology, Vol. 11, No. 4 (September 2004), 598; William C. Placher in Christian Century (September 7, 2004; Geoffrey Wainwright in First Things 141 (March, 2004), 36-39; Daniel Gallagher in Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Vol. 17, No. � (2005), 193-194.
[10] See Raymond Gawronski, Word and Silence: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter between East and West (Edinburg: T&T Clark, 1995).
[11] Summa Theologiae (hereafter ST) I, q. 5, a. 1; I-II, q. 27, a. 1; I, q. 30, a. 8; II-II, q. 145, a. 2; I, q. 5, a. 4; I-II, q. 57, a. 3; In Sententia Ethicorum, cap. 101, a. 7; Super Sentenias, cap. 1, d. 31, q. 2, a. 1.
[12] Francis J. Kovach, Die Aesthetik des Thomas von Aquin (Berlin: De Gruyter 1961), 30.
[13] M. D. Jordan, "The Evidence of the Transcendentals and the Place of Beauty in Thomas Aquinas," in International Philosophical Quarterly, 29 (1989), 393-407.
[14] Metaphysics, Books 6 and 8; Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1.
[15] See John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University Press, 2000), 65-93. See also George P. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960); Ralph McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
[16] A recent study by Luciani Rivero and Rafael Francisco constitutes a valuable contribution to the study of analogy and theological aesthetics. El misterio de la diferencia : un estudio tipol�gico de la analog�a como estructura originaria de la realidad en Tom�s de Aquino, Erich Przywara y Hans Urs von Balthasar y su uso en teolog�a trinitaria (Rome: Pontificia Universit� Gregoriana, 2002).
[17] See Armand Mauer, "The Analogy of Genius," The New Scholasticism, 29 (1955), 127-144; cf. Gerald B. Phelan, Saint Thomas and Analogy (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1941), 9-20.
[18] I believe that this is particularly a weakness in the work of David Tracy. See The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 408-421. Cf. Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 97-99.
[19] ST, I, q. 3, a. 2 and a. 6; q. 11, a. 3 and a. 4.
[20] See Aquinas' Commentary on the Metaphysics, XII, lect. 12; cf. his Commentary on the Physics, I.
[21] See De veritate, q. 27, a. 1.
[22] See Commentary on the Metaphysics, I,, lect. 9, n. 138.
[23] See Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), 30-38; see also Etienne Gilson, "The Forgotten Transcendental: Pulchrum", in Elements of Christian Philosophy (New York: Greenwood, 1960), 159-63.
[24] See De veritate, q. 1, a. 1; cf. Commentary on the Metaphysics, cap. 5, lect. 9.
[25] Francis J. Kovach, Die Aesthetik des Thomas von Aquin (Berlin: De Gruyter 1961), 18-31; see also Kovach, F. J. "The Transcendentality of Beauty in Thomas Aquinas", in Die Metaphysik im Mitterlalter (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, II), ed. by P Wilpert (Berlin, 1963), 386-92.
[26] Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), 335-359.
[27] John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000).
[28] Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, trans. J. F. Scanlan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), 30, 32-34; Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Bredin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 20-48.
[29] Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, trans. J. F. Scanlan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), 30, 173.
[30] Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, trans. J. F. Scanlan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), 30.
[31] ST, I, q. 3, a. 4.
[32] See Iraneaus, Against Heresies, in The Early Church Fathers, ed. Robert Grant (London: Routledge, 1997), 91-101; Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator, in The Fathers of the Church, trans. Simon Wood (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 183-187, 200-201; John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, in Fathers of the Church, trans. Paul W. Harkins (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 304-307.
[33] Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, Vol. 4, eds. James Donaldson and Alexander Roberts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965).
[34] See Edward Farley, Faith and Beauty: A Theological Aesthetic (Burlington: Ashgate, 2001), 6-12.
[35] ST, I, q. 39, a. 8.
[36] ST, I, q. 2, 4; q. 4. 3; I-II, 51, 1; q. 110, 4.
[37] ST, I, q. 39, a. 8.
[38] "And thus it is obvious why eternity, beauty, and use are attributed or appropriated to the Persons, but not in regard to essence or operation." ST, I, q. 39, a. 8.
[39] The terms Aquinas uses are integritas, proportio or consonantia, and claritas. ST, 1, q. 39, a. 8.
[40] "Hinc etiam consequenter intellegitur non tantummodo de patre dixisse apostolus Paulum: Qui solus habet immortalitatem, sed de uno et solo deo, quod est ipsa trinitas. Neque enim ipsa uita aeterna mortalis est secundum aliquam mutabilitatem; ac per hoc filius dei, quia uita aeterna est, cum patre etiam ipse intellegitur ubi dictum est: Solus habet immortalitatem." De Trinitate I, VI, 10.
[41] "An image is said to be beautiful if it perfectly represents a thing, even if that thing is ugly." ST I, 39, 8.
[42] See M. D. Roland-Gosselin, "Peut-on parler d'intuition intellectuelle dans la philosophie Thomiste?" in Philosophia Perennis (Regensburg: J. Habbel, 1930); Marc de Munnynck, "L'esth�tique de St. Thomas d'Aquin," in San Tommaso d'Aquino (Milan: Piemme, 1923).
[43] See Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1988), 64-81; John Haldane describes how each of the three essential characteristics of the beautiful apply holistically to works of art by examining the specific case of architecture. "Form, meaning, and value: a history of the philosophy of architecture," in The Journal of Architecture, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1999): 9-20.
[44] Aquinas indicates in a number of places that the good and the beautiful are identical (idem): "...pulchrum et bonum in subiecto sunt idem." ST I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1; "...pulchrum est idem bono." ST, q. 27, a. 2, ad 3. He refines this identity by teaching that the good (bonum) differs from the beautiful (pulchrum) by virtue of "ratio": "Sed ratione differunt" ST I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1; "...pulchrum est idem bono, sola ratione differens." ST q. 27, a. 2, ad 3.
[45] Beauty of the Infinite, 8-17.
[46] Beauty of the Infinite, 33-34; 44-52; 417-430.
[47] Beauty of the Infinite, 49.
[48] Beauty of the Infinite, 150.
[49] Beauty of the Infinite, 155-175.
[50] Beauty of the Infinite, 15-17.
[51] Beauty of the Infinite, 3-4, 291-292.
[52] Beauty of the Infinite. 30-31.
[53] Beauty of the Infinite, 253, 331-337.
[54] Cf. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanagh (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1973), 155-159; Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 1, trans. Kieran Kavanagh (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1987), 237-244.
[55] Confessions, Book 10, Chapter 27. Translation taken from Frank Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954).
[56] Beauty of the Infinite, 30.
[57] John Macquarrie, Jesus in Modern Thought (London: SCM Press, 1990), 418-435.
[58] "The New Testament managed to say all the important things about Jesus without getting into niceties of metaphysical discussion." John Macquarrie, Jesus in Modern Thought (London: SCM Press, 1990), 374.
[59] Beauty of the Infinite, 230-232.
[60] Beauty of the Infinite, 232.
[61] Beauty of the Infinite, 314.
[62] Beauty of the Infinite, 314-315.
[63] Beauty of the Infinite, 300.
[64] Hart writes, "In contrast to more traditional (and perhaps more substantial) discussions of analogy, I want to consider principally how analogy (as a linguistic event) constitutes, for Christian thought, a true (and so peaceful) rhetorical style." Beauty of the Infinite, 301.
[65] Beauty of the Infinite, 301.
[66] Beauty of the Infinite, 251.
[67] Beauty of the Infinite, 251.
[68] Beauty of the Infinite, 253.
[69] See footnote 44 above.
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