ABSTRACT
The final chapter then illustrates the significance of this new interpretation of Barth’s understanding of beauty by arguing that aside from its contribution to studies of Barth’s theology, it could provide a foundation for theological aesthetics, which many may find more attractive than the current alternatives. Since the middle of the twentieth century, there have been increasing calls for the addition of theological aesthetics alongside dogmatics and ethics as a subdiscipline of theology. This endeavour is widely understood as a conceptual inquiry into the problems of philosophical aesthetics by means of the sources and norms of Christian theology. And the most common foundation for it is a systematic theology of beauty. Although Barth himself never put his analogia pulchritudinis to this use, there is nothing about his theology that would prevent it. Although Barth maintains that theology is the science of the Word of God alone, he always acknowledged that because this is a revelation of God, it has implications for all things including aesthetics. Barth’s systematic theology of beauty has many of the same strengths as other current foundations for theological aesthetics. Like them, it is at once rigorously Christian – Trinitarian, Christocentric and integral – and yet generalisable as well, and thus could provide a good model for theological analysis of other aesthetic values. Yet, it also lacks many of the weaknesses of the current alternatives. For instance, it does not rely upon a speculative and contentious extra-biblical ontology, and it largely avoids a Neo-Platonising tendency to denigrate material beauty.
