ABSTRACT
Christian reflection on beauty, after centuries of relative neglect, is undergoing a renaissance.1 For Hans Urs von Balthasar, this neglect arose from a devaluing of the contemplative dimension in religious practice and thought, resulting in a forgetfulness of the relationship between beauty and revelation.2 Similar fluctuations in the attention given to beauty have also occurred in philosophical aesthetics and artistic practice. The questioning of the nature and role of beauty since the Enlightenment has gradually led to beauty being viewed as inimical or inessential to aesthetics and the aims of art.3 This brought about a significant change, as the centrality of beauty in aesthetics had been taken for granted from classical times. This dethroning of beauty would later be taken to the extent that artistic movements such as Dada deliberately avoided creating works that could be considered beautiful; and much Pop Art and contemporary conceptual art treat beauty as irrelevant. A reasonable inference to draw from these changes in the fortunes of beauty is that there is something not wholly straightforward in our experience and understanding of beauty. Yet much recent theological aesthetics acts as though unaware of this possibility, treating beauty as clear-cut and making large claims about it, without consideration of the issues that have motivated the questioning of beauty. In so doing, theological aesthetics often consciously reacts against a tradition that has admittedly played a major role in bringing about the present situation. However, such a failure to engage in a more interdisciplinary
way has the result of closing theological aesthetics from what may be insightful and legitimate within much of the philosophical aesthetics of the last 300 years.
