Theological Aesthetics Quotes

“theological aesthetics will consider God, religion, and theology in relation to sensible knowledge (sensation, imagination, and feeling), the beautiful, and the arts.”
― Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art

“A most interesting example of the combination of this theology with aesthetic practice is found in the memoirs of the great twelfth-century abbot Suger, who made the church at St. Denis the first great work of the Gothic style in northern France. Suger has left us an unusual record of both the Platonic theology of art and his spiritual experience of finding God in the aesthetic. In the verses inscribed on the gilded cast bronze doors of the basilica, representing the passion and resurrection of Christ, he gives to the viewer this message concerning the purpose of the artwork:
Whoever”
― Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art

“Augustine affirms that not only the beauties of the world but also those sought by human art are ultimately derived from the divine beauty and its desirability. Nevertheless, he is constantly aware that they may be misused and become an obstacle instead of a means to God:
But 1, 0 my God and my Beauty, from hence I also sing a hymn to You, and make a sacrifice of praise to my Sanctifier; because those beauties which are conveyed through the soul into cunning hands, all descend from that beauty which is above our souls, for which my soul sighs day and night. But those who fashion and seek external beauties derive thence li.e., from the ultimate Beauty] their affirmation of these things, but not the correct way of using them. Yet there It is, although they do not perceive It, so that they might not wander too tar, but might preserve their strength only for You, and not waste it on pleasurable exhaustions.u”
― Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art

“In one of the most celebrated passages of the Confessions, he addresses God as primal Beauty:
Late have I loved You, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved You! and behold, You were within me, and I was outside, and I sought you there, and threw myself, deformed, upon the beautiful things which You made. You were with nie, but I was not with you. Those things held me far from You; things which would not even exist unless they were in You. You called and cried out and broke open my deafness; You shone forth and glowed and chased away my blindness; You blew fragrantly on me, and I drew breath and I pant for You; I tasted You, and I hunger and thirst for You; You touched me, and I was inflamed with desire for your peace.”
― Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art

“He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty ... beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from this ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end.
And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair firms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.”
― Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art